Organic
by Demyrie
Summary: ConWorth series. Part VIII: One of these days, Conrad's Suck will reach critical mass and he will be forced to undergo character growth.
1. Organic

A/N: Worth's definition of a high-maintenance man: when he has to take his hand off his dick long enough to slash his own wrist for the lazy motherfucker.

Haha, yes! I have been HINABN'd! It feels gooooood.

OKAY SO. This is very sensation-based and imagery whorish. I've never written vampires before (STOP GNEEING, Raehimura, my lovely copyeditor) so I'm playing around, trying to, like, set up a parallel between fruits and people DURHUR. Also sticking by current canon: Conrad only has one tooth, has never turned into a bat before, is all virginal, and I'm going by the 'vampires have trouble getting it up on blood shortage' thing. Or rather, it takes more for them to get it up.

Also, faaaaaailpire. Just sayin. I love fics where Conrad gets the swing of things with surprising readiness, but I wanted to extort his awkward failpire time before he gets said swinginess. He's been trained to let The Man take control when things get freaky for so long, he'd have some trouble taking the lead.

THERE WILL BE MOAR. And it will be better/more concise/less obnoxious. Promise.

Warnings: language, sexual content, heavy blood/violence

* * *

Organic

* * *

In a cockeyed attempt to deceive himself, Conrad never really thought about how much he despised the packaged blood.

Deceiving himself about unpleasantries was a dirty habit he'd gotten into over the course of his life. _It's all in my head_ and _everything will be fine_ were common half-lies planted by his life-long therapist, Mrs. Orfinhaur, but even the logical knowledge that the greasy-haired boys who wailed on him in middle-school would never make it out of the back of Mickey D's never quite made it alright to be beat up in the first place. Superiority didn't make the bruises heal faster, nor stop him from getting two for flinching when they knocked his tray onto the lunchroom linoleum. Still, he took control where he could: successful, calm, _adult_ Conrad Achenloch knew his type and found no shame in it.

He had every event of his life down on his iCal, including helpful and politely-phrased reminders about upcoming deadlines that he had never once needed. He had one of those TV-order-only vacuum packaging sets for his angora sweaters. He paid ten dollars a month for the privilege of recycling. He had three different types of hair-gel and chose between them based on the humidity of the day.

It only followed that organic produce was (_had been_) a very large part of his generally prissy life, and gulping _anything_ out of a plastic packet was a sweeping betrayal of every food moral he'd ever had.

He was _that man_—yes, that man with the coupons—that held the buttery, ripply-skinned squash up to the fluorescents at least twice before sighing and folding it into its thin plastic swaddling. Next, the avocados (gnarled green shell, oh sweet beta-sitosterol!), then the bulging tomatoes. His was a shamelessly aesthetic religion centered around the firm yellow clefts of bell peppers and the candied curve of apples, all free from the sin of pesticides and immigrant-packaged betrayal.

That said, Conrad did not like opening up Worth's yellowed, molt-blotted fridge and wondering not _what is it_ but _who is it_ and _how fucking long has he/she been there_.

On bad days, the blood tasted like sour salt and anti-coagulants with a hint of plastic. It was endlessly, inescapably clammy, even when he dared to microwave it in his favorite coffee cup… and then washed it out with a disgusted keening sound that came a little too close to a sob for his liking, but that was from the Starbucks rewards program and god, on some level he was still expecting _coffee_ when he tipped it up, fuck, _fuck_.

It just wasn't _food_, which was good because part of him was still in full-fledged denial about this whole vampire thing and was still holding out that he would wake up soon. Part of him was still hunched in his computer chair and looking at that sparse blue-white internet page, furiously blinking the fresh blood out of his eye and thinking: Hanna Cross, Paranormal Investigator? _Really_?

The cold, wiggly packaged blood was Conrad's proof of _really_, and then _all up in your ass_ besides that.

He knew he would have died otherwise (and, er, _stayed_ dead), but life as a vampire wasn't worth un-living. When he gulped the blood down, it _re-_packaged itself in tiny little plastic gulp-packages and just floated there in his center, that… hollowed-out black-lacquered inside place. Conrad wasn't all that sure he had a stomach at the moment, partly because he didn't think he owned anything soft and pink anymore, and partly because it was his entire skinny-brittle frame that was hit with those goddamn hunger-pains when he skipped a drink or two.

He didn't actively _try_ to make his insides cramp up, as he didn't like hunger and he certainly didn't like pain. But the cold blood just stayed cold, and it felt awful on the way down. It wasn't satisfying—not that he was _looking_ for satisfying or was willing to brave the _concept_ of satisfying. Too messy and too… out-of-another-person. It just wasn't good. After the first deciding taste of 'this is necessary', that was it.

Deprived of apples and coffee and sunlight, Conrad Achenleck's existence was becoming an accumulation of necessary evils, but one particular evil – one man – stood at the top of that chart, awful enough that even cold blood paled in comparison.

* * *

Worth didn't have a phone.

The sallow, leering man pushed 'anti-social' beyond negligence and into maliciousness: he seemed determined to trip up anyone who actively wanted to know where he was, Lamont included. Anyone who needed to reach him could walk in the goddamn door, he said, and if he wasn't there they could come back tomorrow (if they were still alive). The only soul who could find him with any reliability, it seemed, was Hanna.

Conrad got the strong impression that phone-calls—contact with a person more than ten feet away—were Worth's least favorite thing in the world. Conrad, conversely, cherished the distance and quick termination of phone-calls. _If_ he was going to have to speak with someone, especially his mother, he would prefer to have the option to end it with a miserable excuse and the press of a button.

Otherwise there was… pressure. Palms got sweaty, rooms closed in. Normal symptoms of the social anxiety disorder he may or may not have beaten back five years ago. Still twinged sometimes; his favorite war wound, gifted by his mother and all of her _insistence_.

This communication schism—who the hell didn't have a cell-phone in this day and age? – left schedule-addicted, iPhone-dependent Conrad tapping his foot in Worth's filthy street office at all hours of the night, waiting and waiting and _waiting_ for some gracious soul to offer up their arm to his needle. Worth was low on 'snack baggies' (don't get him started on that man and his fucking _words_) and he had to keep _some_ for his real transfusions, which made for some genuine quality time between the two.

Introductory cracks were guaranteed, but sometimes Worth was genuinely busy and Conrad quickly discovered that hiding in the box-doc's 'operating' room (previously thought to be for show or hosting crack deals) was actually not the smartest plan for being left alone. _Especially_ when real people came in needing real things stitched up and the red blood on their knees looked like some kind of insanely bright, delicious garnish to him. Conrad was quickly forced into the main room, tucked into the corner with his laptop. Worth may have dragged him down there through his stubborn refusal to get a phone, denying him even the ability to _call ahead_ and check his stores, but there was no way the man was going to cut into his goddamn productivity.

One such night, just when the wet streets outside went truly quiet, there came a weak yet insistent clattering at the heavy metal door. After about a minute of the obnoxious noise, Worth finally threw down his newspaper and got up stomping and hissing. Then Conrad heard Worth's surprised grunt and the squeak and boom of the door. He looked over to see the tall, skinny rag of a man walking slowly beside a stooped older lady who was clunking along, foot by foot, with a walker that looked like it had come out of the wrong side of a car-crash.

Conrad's first instinct was usually to shield his precious computer from any of Worth's 'customers' (as a respectable upper-middle-class citizen, he had been well-trained to fear anyone whose pants weren't ironed), but this was different. The designer was so startled by the appearance of someone so old and feeble in such a bad part of town that he didn't even think about the man beside her. She was shaking, eyes wide and oily-pink at the edges with her hay-grey hair knotted at the back of her head. Conrad smiled at her as she passed, if just because he knew that paranoid jitter somewhat intimately and it was a cold and lonely three a.m. and her dirty dress only went to her knees, but he also flashed his tooth in the process.

She stopped so abruptly that her walker rattled on the floor. He could—yes, he could smell the watery spike in her adrenaline, adrenal glands coughing their last. Her wrinkly, sodden eggplant heart beat twice as fast; guilt kicked Conrad hard in the shin and came back for his nuts.

"No fuss, Ronnols. Puppy don't bite," came Worth's growl, the only noise besides the distant whine of police sirens. Turning his patient towards the back room like he was navigating a swivel chair, the pseudo-doctor looked over his shoulder with a rotten grin. "Not 'nless y'twist his arm behind his back and tickle his neck."

It was some lethal combination of his guilt, discomfort and Worth's scornful drawl: Conrad tugged his turtleneck up over his destroyed neck and got so downright, foot-stomping, third-grader pissed that he quit fucking caring about the old lady.

It was just as well. She exited fifteen minutes later _without_ giving blood, Worth's measured slouch to the desk plainly said _ask and I innerduse ya to my heel_ and Conrad was perfectly happy to assume that Worth had charged her her entire inheritance for a band-aid on her knee. Whatever kept Worth on the other end of the room from him, physically and beyond.

Rule number one: Worth was his dealer, not his friend.

This was not like befriending the barista at the café who knew your tuxedo mocha and soy milk mix as 'the usual'. Conrad didn't _like_ Worth and only dealt with him because, in a choice between Worth and messy-starvation-death, Worth won only by the shortest hair on his grossly unshaven chin. In fact, Conrad was taking an active role in his hatred for the other man.

He was making the decision _not_ to give 'Mr. I Don't Have a First Name' a chance, which was a first for him. It wasn't something _decent_, socially correct people did, but Conrad was beyond being decent. If Worth had a soul, even one that resembled whatever was slowly collapsing in his cigarette dish, Conrad didn't want to see it.

Rule number two: Worth was a dick, dicks generally made exceptional doctors, and dick doctors still treated whoever came to them if they had the cash.

Dicks also cared a whole lot about themselves, but in that charming push-other-people-down-to-get-it way. Newly turned and still surprised by his cold skin, Conrad was tempted to vent some of his unhappiness at the nearest person who understood (which was always, depressingly, Worth), but he always stopped himself. If Worth were in his place – this whole teeth-and-blood thing – he wouldn't waste time bitching. He wouldn't hesitate to dig into animals or people, and it showed in every superior glance Worth dealt him as Conrad sat quietly and hungrily in his scabby concrete corner, waiting for someone to be nice enough to save him from his cowardice as he rearranged merry little color swatches and toyed with opacities.

Worth, assuredly, had never heard of the word opacity, which somehow made Conrad resent his very existence even more.

When Worth finally tossed him a cold packet two hours before sunrise, Conrad looked down at the bulging bit of red, exhaustion greying his face. When he looked up, Doc's sly eyes were pinned on him, lurking just above the ridiculous matted fluff of his coat. Worth didn't quite manage to keep his evil, slithery smile to himself as he twirled a scalpel in his freakishly long and dirty fingers, wiping a bit of something on his wrist but taking care to do it over a big blueberry vein.

Was it bad that Conrad could hear the blade scrape the thin yellow skin, and it sounded like a silver knife over rough sourdough bread?

Hanna, of course, thought the scraggly older man was smiling at a joke he made and got ridiculously excited, swinging his feet on the operating table and accidentally pegging Worth in the knee, who quickly changed his tune and threatened to disembowel him with a spoon (after fixing his stitches and patching his head and dabbing ointment on his split lip). Turning away from the instant furor Hanna was so prized for, Conrad tried not to sigh _too_ loudly. He popped the catheter attachment off and vaguely wished he had a straw, only to regret it a moment later as his very memories flinched and squealed, screaming for sugar and bubbles.

Fuck sunlight. Did life even have meaning without diet Coke?

* * *

One month in and Conrad was getting tired.

Trouble was, since his body now needed an ancient Latin instruction manual, he hardly knew what was causing it. Did vampires even need sleep? Did they _need_-need it, or did it just happen as a way of getting away from the sun?

Because he slept. God, did he sleep. Conrad fell into a stupor the second the sun hit the horizon and blacked out until it set. Part of him thought it was all in his head (which, as proven, was a scary place sometimes), but he slept like a … well, like the dead. Then he woke up and it was like someone just turned a light-bulb on in his head: he was _awake._ But now it only lasted half the night.

He was starting to feel sluggish. Almost sick. He was dragging his feet in his apartment, having trouble focusing, not wanting to go out. The last bit was very in-character for him, but could vampires seriously get sick? Part of him cursed Hanna for not taking responsibility and having The Talk with him, but asking the springy little man-boy about his condition would have been submitting to it. Conrad could still hang on a little longer on hearsay and common sense, even in this utterly fucked-up world of zombies and evil she-bats that he had found himself in.

Worst part was the cold. He was starting to feel it, even in his goddamn teeth. That persistent chill found him both edgy and uncharacteristically nosy. Stupid, too.

Stuck at the hobo-office again, Conrad rummaged through Worth's cabinets for anything that might help, staying far away from the microwave in the process. He pushed aside tiny white water-damaged boxes with only the very tips of his fingers, grimacing at a dark stain where one had cracked. He picked one up. Adrenaline injection, 1:1000.

Part of him was impressed that Worth had such sophisticated material. The other half was wondering if he could dump it into his cup and not explode five minutes after. Could he lace blood with caffeine? Did chemicals still work? Fuck, how did the first vampires figure all this shit out, and how many _actually_ exploded in the process?

"In'erest you in a nightcap?"

_Shit_. Worth.

Conrad slammed the drawer shut instinctively, then winced at the god-awful clatter. The other man had been out on a food run but was _obviously_ back. Something told him Worth didn't take kindly to people messing with his shit, no matter how water-damaged. Trying with all his might not to look like a guilty ten-year-old, the graphic designer turned around, teeth (_tooth_) already bared.

Smirk happy and fat on his face, Worth was holding a packet of blood in his hand. The crack about finding a nice prostitute on the way to Wafflehouse died in Conrad's dry throat.

"Fresh," Worth nearly purred, one brow inching up.

"Where did you get that?" Conrad said blankly, eyeing it. He could see the warmth coming off of it; it might as well have been steaming up the pouch. It was vibrantly, deliciously red: a liquid poinsettia wrapped in plastic like a couch.

… No, that proved it. His metaphor had gone to hell, and an artist was always at his worst when he couldn't manage a simple metaphor. He needed to just skip tonight. Get his coat (a laughable prop, now) and go back to his apartment and go to bed. It was almost morning.

"Ain't sure your delicate sensibilities can handle 'at," Doc snickered, popping his neck. "Thought y'didn' like t'know where yer meals came from, princess."

Oh, Conrad knew full well where his meals came from. He just didn't like to know _who_, even as his mind loved to make up stories anyways. _This man had syphilis for three years before limping his way into Worth's office, high on crack and put out his arm—_god, _god_, it made his skin crawl. Pathophobia had not been kind to him, and the idea of drinking liquid disease just … god.

Gulp gulp gulp. Gonorrhea-HIV-tuberculosis. _Delicious_.

But this. This was still warm. Where had it come from?

"Tell me you didn't—" Conrad began unsurely, unable to manage the accusation. Worth managed to pluck out and light a cigarette _scornfully_, chapped lip curling.

"I know ya only take charity, bumfag."

Still, he looked at it hesitantly. Why was he so damn hesitant? It was like whatever was in his veins had suddenly turned to water.

"Fer chrissakes, quit bein' a pussy," Worth ordered abruptly, shaking the packet hard enough to make the stuff froth like soy latte expr—_no_. Conrad clamped down on any thoughts of coffee, then realized Worth was still badgering him. "—uckin' waster. Want me ta put it inna bottle for ya n' fuckin' burp ya after?"

"_No_," he said snottily, crossing his arms, and then he realized how fucking third-grade that looked and uncrossed them. It was the only thing he came up with. Even though he was hungry, he couldn't even manage a move to take it and he had no idea why.

It probably had a good deal to do with Worth's smugness, his barely-there _insistence_. Made him nervous.

Of course Worth started to toy with _his_ food if he wasn't going to. Grunting impatiently, the thin man sloshed it from side to side right in front of the vampire's face, then let it flop over and squeezed it like a water-gun. The blood hit Conrad's white chin and neck in a thin, warm pissy stream. He recoiled with a screech, immediately succeeding in smearing it all over his white button-down.

"Woopsie," Worth drawled, shit-eating grin firmly in place. Conrad slapped at his neck, spine wiggling as the liquid crept down under his collar.

"What th—_fuck_! Seriously? What are you, seve-"

The smell hit him. No, the smell _bulldozed_ him, making any and all rage mist upwards harmlessly. Poof.

Before Conrad knew it his fingers were in his mouth, just like before. His mouth clenched tight around them, sealing in the rapidly dissipating heat. His stomach hardened and he opened his eyes. Had he closed them?

"Fuck, that's good," he breathed when he let go, the achy space between his temples suddenly expanding almost dreamily.

Good? The word confused him. It had never been good before. But it was: it was good. Jesus, it downright _tingled_.

Like pop-rocks. Bloody fucking pop-rocks before his braces went on. _Good_.

"Want the rest?"

Conrad looked up to see the back-alley doctor waggling the fat packet just out of reach, smirk sharp enough to cut skin.

It was late. He was hungry. It was _good_.

Already too used to Worth and the boundaries he _didn't_ have, Conrad didn't fuck around. He lunged for the packet, teeth bared, prepared to knock the other man down before he could play keep-away. He found that the dramatics were crushingly unnecessary the instant he managed to stuff it into his mouth—along with two of Worth's fingers.

_Well fuck_, he thought somewhere in the back of his head, _that's embarrassing._ Then the salt and grime hit his tongue. When his fang sank into Worth's tough skin, it was followed by something else _entirely_.

But no, it was exactly the same thing. Just fresh. _Fresher_.

"S'that… you?" he slurred (he'd never slurred before in his _life,_ but with the man's dirty fingers still in his mouth like carrot-sticks, _well_-) and Worth snickered.

"At's me. Magically delicious."

That packet was one-hundred-percent Worth. The fact that the other man was _delicious_ didn't bother him as much as the fact that Worth had probably planned this whole thing from the moment he wiped the blood from his nose. _Keen on you_, Hanna had said in that goofy, amused way that told him it was the absolute truth. Bastard motherfucker.

_Delicious_ bastard motherfucker.

Anything Conrad was about to say was instantly demolished when Worth twisted his fingers. It was just another drop of blood, but the way Conrad's gut responded it might as well have been a flood. He bit down, worrying a knuckle. Worth made a little hissing noise that was nonetheless distinctly unimpressed, and then his spit-slick fingers were on the side of Conrad's pale face, pinching his cheek.

"Fuck, Connie, ya make fuckin' around the bush inna an art."

Worth shoved the bag back into his mouth and brutally squeezed it, making Conrad almost choke, but then he was swallowing and it was good, so fucking good. He gulped and gulped like someone offered water instead of coke after five weeks in the desert: it was that pure, that basically _fundamental_. He shuddered, fingers clamped around Worth's pulsing wrist.

He didn't make a single noise when Worth flung the bag aside far too soon and suddenly crammed him to his brittle chest, both of them jolting against the doctor's operating table. It was an unfamiliar sensation, but it was nothing compared to the velvety cloud of sound and sensation that held Worth's firm, ripe heart and his scent of smoke and sweat and humanity. Conrad could feel-hear-see every delicate little avenue of red twining through his wiry limbs. Everything was speeding up, getting richer, more vibrant, including his own body.

So much hot blood being pumped through tight veins in front of him. Faster, faster. It sounded fucking _amazing_.

Conrad finally managed to jerk back from the dark sensory overload and take a huge, completely unnecessary gasp. Riling, hating to be out of control, he tensed and pushed against Worth, who only gripped him tighter. His dirty fingernails dug into the vampire's shoulders, leaving weak pink smears. Then Worth gave a rough chuckle, the same texture and unevenness as his smoke-matted fur.

"Hardly know what t'do with all that blood, d'ya."

Conrad only realized that Worth's hand was crammed between his shaking legs, uninvited and lewd as every other part of him was, when he looked down. Only then was the vampire able to unlock his vocal chords enough to groan. He had an erection. For the first time since dying, he had a holy fucking erection.

Not only that, it was all over him: every place that had blood was tingling like fucking crazy. At this point, he _was_ an erection. A giant, howling, stupid erection.

"_How_," he choked, warmth gushing through him at a terrifying pace. He fought the urge to buck his hips into the pressure. Panted. "How is this even…?"

"Hell if I know. Your kind are a regular back-alley fuck of physics anyhow." Worth's voice became insidious, slithery, knowing. "There's a reason they like t'eat so much though. Surprised they ain't fat as hippos. Then 'gain, bloods some pretty healthy shit. Lotsa iron."

Conrad _knew_ the other man's prickly face was way too close, but could only stare at the pearlescent red veins etched in Worth's lidded muddy green eyes.

"N' my cholesterol levels beat the shit outta anyone else yer gonna find in this town."

That was all the warning he got before Worth attacked him.

The man's wet mouth was a punch to his scraped-raw senses: his saliva was tar and his breath was humid factory smoke. Conrad's first instinct was to flinch away from the awful ashy taste, not to mention _a man's mouth on his_, but Worth made the mistake of digging his nails into his sides. Anger or panic or just plain _intensity_ demanded a response.

Somehow biting down had entered Conrad's short-list of 'things to do when nothing else makes sense', ranked comfortably beside clearing his throat and averting his eyes. So he bit like a mousetrap and he felt his fang go into the other man's lip. It was easy and wet, like stabbing the glistening flesh of a grapefruit with a fork. There was a definite puncture and blood sloshed onto his chin.

"N-noh god."

He gasped it, horrified at the felt-noise and the memories of having a warm tender lip to bust. Then came the reprise, red and slick with a twist of his tongue:

"Oh _god_."

He went blank. A black, rich, trembling kind of blank.

"Cute," Worth rasped. Conrad only heard the crisp slap on his cheek, but felt the doctor's callused palm stick to his skin and his smog-like warm breath scrape his lips. Conrad blindly bent toward the coppery, messy, fleshy well of the other man's red-smeared mouth, tongue out. Worth's thumb pushed into his mouth, prodding at his blunt right canine.

"Y'really are still teethin'. Righty's not come in yet."

He made some sort of impatient _fuck-you_ noise, sucking insistently on Worth's thumb—and then realized what the hell he was doing and, worse, what he'd just done. Conrad opened his eyes and jerked back and gasped for the fourth time. Stretched over red-smeared teeth in a harrowing grin, the other man's mouth had turned into a fucking ratty _open wound_ and god, that was not good and had he _done_ that?

Hit with a painful starburst of clarity, Conrad put every single immortal iota of his strength into escaping Worth's wiry arms. He struggled away, maybe so he could writhe on the cockroach-infested floor in peace and maybe _die_ (for good this time), but Doc yanked him back. He grunted, amused, when Conrad slapped at him, unable even to coax his hands into fists. Muttering an uninspired profanity, the doctor took the palm of his hand and shoved it against Conrad's mouth, like an awkward flat-handed blow or an attempt to muffle him.

First came a flare of pain—his fleshy lip got caught and he felt it tear messily with a pinch—but then the firm, ashy flat of Doc's palm rammed into his teeth, making a crisp puncture like a knife splitting through a melon. Life bled out, startling and salty. He closed his wet mouth instantly, sealing the flood off from the tainting air. He sucked, instinctively, tongue prodding into the gash he had made.

"_Fuck_," Doc hissed somewhere in front of him, but the rise in his voice was nearly manic: an exhalation of hallelujah in his religion.

It was a tribute or a verbal reenactment of the slicing of his skin, expelled in an exhilarated hiss. Penetration. Release.

Conrad, lost to the taste of copper and vibrancy, kept searching for more, but his tongue grated over the rough patch. Even the salt was gone. He couldn't think of anything else to do with the well dry, so he just kept gnawing until he was forcibly pulled away.

Worth rummaged in front of him, impatience not only tangible but an acidic boiling force. His pomegranate heart was beating ridiculously fast, his every muscle taut and creaking and hot. Some sort of delicious scent was thick in the air around them, pooling in Worth's collarbone and behind his ears, only confusing Conrad hellishly and adding to the dumb cacophony of _more more more_.

"Fuck it—fuckin' primadonna _fusspot_ one-fanged motherfucker—have to do _everything_—didn't that hag give you any fuckin' _instincts_-"

There was a quick slashing motion, a practiced stab of an elbow both too slow and too fast for Conrad's clouded vision, and suddenly Worth pressed his wet wrist up to his slippery lips and, he swore to god, he – fuck, he _moaned_ as his mouth covered the slash.

Conrad felt his warming hands grip the man's wrist; in exquisite detail, he felt the strong veins jumping underneath his fingertips and the bones guarding them. He twisted up and down Worth's rough forearm like he was caressing the neck of a violin (tracing sounds, vibrations, life through the narrow avenue of his wrist), mirroring the motion below, where Doc's other hand was jerking haphazardly in his lap.

The two rhythms blended and peaked. He sucked with Doc's pulse and his sweet thump-thump-thump timed his pumps so Conrad bent and greedily sucked his salty cock all the way from his wrist and Doc groaned deeply in his ear, warm stubble scraping his cheek.

"That's it, puppy. Drink up. You'll learn to like it," he muttered to no one in particular, rough voice wrecked by the tremble of his hand. His eyes shone out of his paling face, fixed on the dark crown of Conrad's impeccably gelled hair.

"If you wanna live, you'll learn to."

* * *

Twelve hours later, Conrad woke up on a damp papery cot.

At first, it was a Herculean effort just to open his eyes. Memories crept back to him out of the void and he rustled around for no more than a second before the nausea hit him, soaking through his heavy body. He groaned and closed his eyes, trying to shut out the buzz of the ratty yellow fluorescents.

The moment he tried to stand up, he knew: he'd drank too much. Gorged. It was a highly unpleasant sensation, walking the tightrope between nauseated and horribly satisfied.

Conrad was simply too exhausted to face the events of the previous night with anything but dispassion. He also vaguely remembered Worth punching him in the face. It didn't sound like something you _could_ vaguely remember, and yet here he was, pawing at memories of a sharp crack to his chin. A glance across the rust-spotted mirror proved it. There was a pinkish splot on his jaw, but even then it was like his body was covetous of the new blood: the welt was fading with incredible quickness back into his muscle.

He looked down, then shut his eyes again and groaned. There was a _spot_ on his pants.

Not just a spot but a _splatter_. Suddenly (if just because of the faintly appealing smell of something remarkably like blood in composition) Conrad knew precisely what it was and could see Worth hardly stopping to swipe at it with the hem of his coat before chucking him in bed.

No. No, he hadn't wiped it off, he'd smeared it _into_ the fabric, and Conrad could perfectly imagine the shitty grin that accompanied it before the doctor heaved him off onto the cot.

His ire deflated rather suddenly, sapped by his headache. Hell, he was lucky not to be on the floor. He just… needed a new pair of pants.

He was not going to check inside of them. Wasn't. Could vampires even…?

Conrad walked into the main room as though he had never been there before, each step conscious and heel-to-toe. Something in him jumped at the sight of Worth kneeling beside his desk, shoulders-deep in a box. Conrad could smell cologne and the fresh chemical tang of newly-ripped duct-tape. Lamont had clearly been there.

The fact he could smell the cologne of a man who had dropped by six hours ago was overshadowed by the musk of a cat outside, the intent rustle of a rat cleaning its hard pink paws and Worth's steady, deep heartbeat. Conrad swallowed.

The back-alley doctor looked up at him, grunted, and went back to digging through the new supplies, tossing things on the filthy floor and bitching to himself about an apparent shortage of something. Conrad watched a pack of bandages fall close to an oil stain, nose wrinkling unconsciously, and stared at the other man's skinny, ugly, upturned rear for at least a full minute until Worth pulled up a package and looked at it.

His entire right hand was white with new bandages.

"Y'went af'er me like I was a fuckin' juice-box, Confag," he muttered around his cigarette as he inspected a roll of ace bandages, thoroughly stepping on Conrad's chance to have the first, assuredly angry word. "You must'a been hungry."

Worth had looked first at Hanna, who was knocked out over a jumbled line-up of waiting room chairs, to see if he was awake before speaking. His odd attitude towards the boy had no explanation. At least, no explanation that didn't involve a soul locked away inside his emaciated chest.

No. Conrad _wasn't interested_. He was not going to become a hunter of the elusive Worth-Heart, even if it was to prove that the man once fit into society and that leaving it was the cause of all his misanthropy. No, he'd be better off chasing Bigfoot.

Which, considering his current company, would probably be attempted next week.

"What _was_ that?"

It was all he could think to say.

There were too many thoughts about Worth calling him fanciful permutations of faggot when _he_ was the one who had kissed him, or at least mashed their mouths together – dirtied his slacks, even! Part of him shuddered mechanically at the thought. He liked women. In theory.

Then again … he liked blood now, too. Feared it but liked it and, as of last night, he actually had a good bit more experience with blood than women. Terrifying, heart-wracking changes weren't all that surprising anymore. They couldn't be, if he was going to stay within two miles of the redhead snoring on a gutted office chair, a rune sharpied in the tender crease of his too-skinny arm.

For the first time in his life, Conrad was hit with the realization that he was going to have to get over _something_ if his existence was going to make sense again—and he actually wanted it to.

"Why… do that, why do any of that?"

He wanted sense. No matter how twisted, no matter how fucked up, he wanted sense and he was willing to fight for it. This was the first question he had genuinely wanted an answer to.

"Y'can't survive off'a the cold-packed shit," Worth said to the scum-flecked mirror, eyes narrowed.

Conrad hadn't even noticed him moving, but the doctor stood at the dirt-smeared sink at the back, swabbing peroxide over his mouth with nothing but an itching curl of his pink lips. It should have been a grimace, but it looked – smelled – like a grin. He didn't even flinch, even when every bawling eight-year-old who fell off his bike knew how much that stuff stung on open wounds.

"Yes, I can. It works," Conrad said defensively, even though all he knew was that he was on two feet. That's all that mattered, right? That he had two feet, he was on them, and neither was rotting. Because he was dead. Not that he was any expert on being dead.

"Naw, y'can't n' no it don't. Not fer the long haul," Worth sneered, flicking the swab into the sink and glaring at him in the mirror. "Y'know that shit with food? Where you can eat all ya want but if you don't eat the right stuff you'll still starve? The shit with…"

He snapped his fingers once, twice. Scowled.

"Nutrition."

"For Christ's sake, you're a _doctor_," Conrad exclaimed, appalled by his lack of terminology.

"And yer a vampire and y'can't even turn into a fuckin' bat," Worth spat. He leveled his finger at the other man, shoulders hunched. "Annat's the point. Vampires eat fresh 'cos it keeps them fresh. Somethin' more than hemoglobin and plasma goes inna ya and y'need that. You don't get it an' you'll waste away. Not sayin' it won't take a few months, but you'll go grey. Yer magic-based. Y'don't need blood, y'need life. S'the reason dead men's blood'll off you."

"I thought you didn't care about vampire physiology," Conrad challenged him quietly after a pause, eyes narrowed.

"S'a difference between physiology and knowin' what kills you. Last one can be helpful with vamps. Ain't the friendliest'a blood-suckin' sharks," Worth answered flatly, switching from cleaning up his scruffy face to picking something out of his teeth.

He replaced his finger with a stubbed cigarette and shrugged his coat off, baring sliced-up arms. Bandages twined up his wrists. Hanna turned over in his sleep, murmuring nonsense.

Worth plunked down in his desk chair and squeaked it closer, scraping a hand through his hacked-off hair. It was something he liked to do, and Conrad would take up the job for him within three months, if just because it made Worth groan weakly into his mouth and dig his ragged nails into his back. Conrad, at the moment, was blissfully unaware of this and just thought the matted blond mess looked like it needed a wash – along with every other inch of the man.

"I'll be around if y'liked it."

"I didn't like it," Conrad said stonily, _immediately_.

"I did." Worth grinned at him. "And I'm 'probly the only person who will. You wanna force some young thing down inn'a an alleyway, getcher hands round their throat 'n listen to 'em scream 'Ooh no, puh-leeeeze no, I got sixteen _kids_'—"

"Stop. _Stop_."

"I'm yer guilt-free meal, Connie. Only one on the menu," Worth drawled, spreading some forms on his desk with a horrible, comfortable finality, like he didn't see the trembling vampire paling to an even more mortified shade of white. "Got the feelin' we'll be rubbin' necks for a while."

When Conrad actually thought about it – forced himself to think about it – this was just about as organic as food could get. Renewable, fresh, vigorous. Little did he know that Worth was the king of artificial additives, but that was a discovery for another night.

The age of insane sense had begun.


	2. In the Face

A/N: First oh god, thank you for so many sweet reviews! Wow! This will be a series of not-really-CHAPTERS but ConWorth scenes all gathered together under the (relatively misleading) title Organic. And yes, there will be a lot. Because I don't do anything small, which is beginning to annoy me to death.

Er, I play Conrad as a bipolar, repressed ball of misery and all around fail. I-I really don't feel this way about violence, but I figure someone as repressed as Conrad would go a little slap-happy the first time he was allowed to wail on someone after a childhood of getting bullied/intimidated (which I totally made up but fanon generally agrees happened).

UGH. This one's as exposition/characterstudy-thick as the last one and I apologize, but it's the last one of its kind. This is for working out Conrad's copious issues. Next we actually start moving with the ConWorth stuff.

HOO. RAY.

_Warnings: violence, language, actually no sexual content what am I crazy?_

_Summary: In which Conrad learns that punching people (namely, Worth) in the face (namely, again) is highly underrated._

_Thanks to Raehimura, my wonderful Beta who sees all of my kinks and hilarious personal issues that I project onto my fiction and doesn't turn away! [tear] luv u bby!_

* * *

In the Face

* * *

How.

That's all Conrad wanted to know. _How_.

How had no one killed Worth before now? How could one man have skulked through his greasy thirty-something years and maintained such a rank lack of maturity, such a devious, dogged urge to _inflame_, and how long was it going to take to get whatever he called dinner out of the man's back pocket when he was fucking _sitting on it_?

No. No, this was not a nightmare—except it most certainly _was_. Worth had literally walked over to the fridge when he came in, gotten the very last blood packet he had and put it _in his pants_, then went about his business.

Hugging the side of the room in that definite 'on my way out' way, Conrad had asked him several useless things that had no answers ("Is that the only one?" "What are you doing?" "How are you such an _asshole_?") and all the while, Worth wouldn't even acknowledge his existence. Pissed off, probably, that he wasn't taking it from his neck after that… debacle. That bitey, dark, awful debacle Conrad was absolutely pretending did not happen.

Part of him thought Worth was just bored. No, part of him _hoped_ he was just bored, because if this was some kind of plan to get Conrad to rip into him in one way or another, it was fucking _working_. His teeth were downright itching in his gums.

But he wouldn't, because he didn't need fresh blood. Not now. Not yet, and Worth was most certainly _not_ going to be the one to push him to it, even as the idiot got him to reach towards his ass for his dinner.

"Serious? Are you fucking _serious_? What-did your brain _ever_ make it past third grade?"

Worth smacked his hand away for the second time, eyes mowing down a yellowed health chart. Frustration sparking between his temples, Conrad stepped back and let out a horrible wumphing huff-growl that was immediately made pathetic and fussy by the silence of the office. He just _stood_ there, and Worth just _sat_ there. An underwhelming force meets an unmovable asshole.

The vampire's stone-cold hands balled into fists, frustration heat-waving upwards. What was he supposed to do, hoist the man off of his fucking chair? It just wasn't something decent people did! And it would put his face within elbow-shot and that was something to be wary of with Worth: he was pretty sure the bastard would break his nose and then blame it on being 'spooked'.

"Y'really do get off on bendin' over for people, don't ya."

Worth's voice, rough and muzzled by his stubbed cigarette, startled him. Conrad blinked. He didn't answer at first, seeing the 'fag-joke' pothole gaping a mile wide, then he glared at the back of Worth's matted fur collar, sizing the other man up in earnest.

Bare bones: he needed to get out by sunrise. That was in four hours. He could definitely get the bag and be on his way by then _without_ getting into some kind of childish altercation. …Couldn't he?

"I wouldn't have to bend over if they didn't stoop so fucking low to begin with," he grit out, putting out his hand. "Just give me the bag. I have a life and I need to get on with it."

"Y'know, when y'first hauled yer batty ass in here, I was pretty stoked. I gave you shit and y'socked me. Like a pussy, but y'socked me," Worth ceded, tone oddly wandering. _Keen on you_, Hanna's voice looped in his mind. Conrad hated how unfocused the normally aggressive man was being, like Worth was only half-admitting his very existence. To add madness to mystery, the doctor's craggy profile as he surveyed the health sheet was downright pensive. "So who did it?"

"What?" Conrad demanded, the beginnings of a massive hunger-migraine scraping at the base of his skull.

"Who stole yer fuckin' undead dick, fagula?"

For a moment, all he saw was stupid red; then Conrad's own lack of competency genuinely appalled him. He had not just spent about ten minutes of his un-life dancing around Worth's chair trying to get the bag, had he? Trying to get out in a _dignified_ and peaceful manner, when it was _Worth_ he was dealing with? He had.

Fuck, he should know better by now. Why hadn't he just grabbed it and yanked it out? _Because it might have ripped_, part of him whined. _Because you don't grab things you want. You ask nicely and if they don't give it to you, you get an adult._

He grit his teeth. Who was the fucking adult here?

"Yer all about avoidin' conflict 'till yer eyes are so red y'snap." The _shuff_ of Worth turning the health-chart page was almost too sharp, making Conrad look for—pray for-a paper-cut so huge it would bleed him dry. "How come?"

Only Worth would think to ask something so stupidly obvious, yet Conrad had a hard time coming up with one answer.

Conrad didn't like rocking the boat. Conrad didn't like disobeying. In fact, going to art school was the only kind of questionable rebellion he had allowed himself because it was his _calling_; he would have ended up as a lackluster and miserable lawyer or something equally socially acceptable, otherwise. Something stable, boring and oh-so middleclass.

Hanna's thousand-mile-an-hour entry to his life violently unseated his five-year streak of general control and middleclass camouflage. The only reason the usually mild-mannered graphic artist could be found in such a snarling, volatile, bitter, teeth-gnashing mood that very first night (or use it as an excuse to punch Worth in the face) was because his entire fucking world had been turned on its head in the space of ten hours. He'd been home-wrecked by a sassy bat from hell who then proceeded to kill him, only to have the awkward man-child he hired to _get rid_ of the demon-spawn turn him into one of said demon-spawn.

Positive self-talk wasn't shit: he had to be continuously pissed to _deal_.

Now, he realized he had mostly worked nights, anyways. Now that he was back to the time-tested routine of dutifully working, politely emailing, conscientiously cleaning, routinely showering… habit took over and Conrad, fang or no, went back to being unobtrusive and non-confrontational, like the public school system had taught him. He went back to lurking in cafes, reluctant to flag down baristas even if they were texting at the bar.

No reason to get his blood pressure up. Being angry was exhausting. Made him get headaches. He even felt awkward if women—hell, anyone—looked him directly in the eye for more than a second, and that was so much more about the _person_ hiding underneath the clammy white skin and fang than the fact that he might be recognized as a bloodless undead creature of the night by the kids canoodling at the coffee shop.

Worth, the man who would not only stare back at a total stranger but flip the bird or make the sign for eating out, obviously found that boring. Worth obviously _liked_ the unstable, snarling ball of anger that was Conrad's repression Golem. Now, Worth was asking him why he bit back his rage until his body just couldn't swallow it anymore?

"It's… what normal people do."

It was all Conrad could think to say, feeling the coupled truth and stupidity of the statement hover and catch its breath. It paused at the opposite end of a wrecking-ball swing, ready to plow forward and smash his middle-class life to pieces. Putting up with offense after offense until they couldn't breathe and couldn't see and downright fucking _snapped_ and punched someone was, indeed, what normal people did.

They were the most ordinary of normal people, who then went into extensive therapy so it would be at least three months before they snapped and punched someone _else_, after which they could begin their slow slide into prescription medication and erectile dysfunction. It was a right of fucking passage for the twenty-first century, and the very thought terrified Conrad in a way he wasn't prepared for. Suddenly, he didn't want to look down, for fear of finding his designer shoes on a path he wasn't aware he'd been following almost religiously.

Down and to the right of his sudden cloud of shock, Worth's sharp eyes narrowed, disgust twisting his prickly face.

"Y'ever work in an office, puppy? Cubicle, like? S'where you baby artfags start, innit. Puttin' the bows on Minnie Mouse."

"Interned," Conrad said stiffly, about to continue with _art isn't just cartoons you asshole and_ _what the hell_, but Worth squeaked around in his roller-chair and arched a brow.

"Took it up the ass whenever the big guy said so, bet."

"That's an intern's _job_," Conrad snapped, exasperation peaking with a messy little pop.

Worth gave him a look that clearly imparted that no one came around his ass unless they were expressly invited to be there—something Conrad had yet to figure out or, even more terrifying, look forward to. It was still a mystery to rival fucking Stonehenge how Worth had made it through even two weeks of medical school. His eagerness to displease had no equal and all that access to laxatives would find bossy rotation leaders in a very bad situation.

"Still wonder what the fuck it took t'get ya on yer own. Someone hadda do the job'a strippin' ya down and forcin' ya inna yer big-boy panties. Sink or swim deal, I bet." He tossed the papers on the table with a dismissive flick. Then he slouched back in a crumpled, ribs-out way that made Conrad realize how utterly scarecrow-thin he was. And then there was that line on his neck, the one with the faint blue-green vein crawling across it, that stuck out and immediately drew Conrad's eye. "You lose it and punch yer boss, too?"

"_Worth_," he hissed, mostly to get his eye off of that vein, but Worth reached back and stood up and then the cold but kind of ass-warmed red blood-bag was in his hand. In his hand, and being wiggled back and forth for emphasis.

Conrad's empty gut twisted violently at the thick, cold, awful sloshing sound, telling him in no uncertain terms that sweaty, dirty Worth would taste much better and his heartbeat would feel amazing against his slick front teeth.

He bit his tongue, immediately tasting old blood. Bad idea.

"You want this?" Worth non-asked briskly, stubbing the very last chalky centimeter of his cigarette in his ashtray with a twist of his wrist. He jerked his chin to the side. "You pop me one."

"I—but-_what_? I fucking _told_ you, asshole."

Wait, no he didn't, but it was _implied_ that he—fuck it. All the spark left his body. There were no words to describe how tired he was in that moment. Tired, and hungry, and miserable. The cracked concrete had worn its way through his fancy white shoes and he was cold and achy and he could feel sunrise looming beyond the city horizon and it downright stung. He put his hand over his face and breathed out.

"I don't want—I just want… to eat."

Conrad tried to make it sound like a demand instead of a plea, ignoring the twisted half-offer entirely. Yes, he wanted to hit Worth, but not like _this_. Once the man offered it, it lost all of its charm and imagined victory (and all of the dirty whispered satisfaction of doing something bad to someone who _deserved_ it, but he absolutely wasn't paying attention to those voices).

He just wanted to get back to his quiet, dark apartment and sulk a little more. Maybe he would watch the Matrix, just like in college after those sketch-jams he and his friends used to have in the dorms. Just like the one that spawned The Tat, where they watched all three Matrix movies just for the chance to yell at the screen and throw popcorn and _be, oh, god, so bored_ just to make a statement that went so well with cheap beer and hamburger helper.

Maybe he'd make it all the way to the end of the first one before he remembered he was dead.

"Just give it to me and I'll leave. Let you get back to your drugs or hookers or whatever the hell you were doing. That's al-"

"Aw, man up," Worth sneered, chopping off his unsteady mumble with all the grace of a blunt butcher's knife. "It'll do y'good."

_It'll_ _do you good to shoot a gun once or twice. It'll do you good to be in a sport_. It'll do you _good_.

Good was a fucking _adjective_.

No one _did good_, or had good done to them in the same way no one had _green_ done to them and for Christ's sake, how many _fucking_ times had he heard that? Anger seared Conrad's throat, choking him up with an immediacy that was undeniably pathetic. It stung and mixed with the backwash of shame that always followed when his in-head movie reel plowed forward: the precise and painful scenes when he screamed and dropped his uncle's gun, sobbing, or when he dropped out—_creeped_ out, head low, shoulders hunched-of basketball after a semester of sitting on the bench and his mother redoubled her efforts to convince the PE teacher of his exercise-induced asthma and get him forever barred from sports which of _course_ Blake Warren heard about and the PE teacher couldn't be around _all_ the time which found him limping home with a ripped backpack and he told mom it snagged on a tree-

"You are fucking impossible," he spat, jabbing his finger towards Worth: all of him, his protruding ribs and matted fur and crack-addict eyes. His fucking nicotine-yellow teeth. "You don't even know what's good for _you_."

"'Least I know what I'm _about_," the doctor shot back with surprising sharpness, lip curling. He faced Conrad so directly, so _taking-aim_, that the other man took a step back just out of instinct. Worth's eyes were suddenly dark and intense, almost scarily intelligent. "I'm givin you an honest to god chance to throw a punch. M'givin' you a fuckin' free shot and you're too much of a goddamn yuppie to take it and I'll be fucked sideways if it's outta pride."

"I don't _want_ to fight!"

"The way you pegged me that first time you were here? You been waitin' to fight for ten years. I can tell." Worth paused to bite off a hangnail, narrowing his grey-ringed eyes and then _smiling_. "You get beat up on when you was a kid, Connie?"

The glitter in his eye told Conrad that Worth was the exact specimen of prepubescent asshole that would have had the greatest of fun wailing on him after lunch. The fact that they were staring each other down and one of them was in a fresh-pressed sweater-vest with a respectable job and the other was sporting a grimy fur-lined lab-coat with no diploma to speak of didn't even match up to the fact that one of them was genuinely, _disgustingly_ pleased with his lot in life—and it wasn't Conrad.

"Weekly," the designer said in a clear, almost dangerous voice he didn't quite know was his. "And I like to think I'm better than turning that on other people."

"Oho, mister high an' mighty." Worth cackled, short and ugly. "Learned that in conflick resolution class, didja. Faggot."

That word again. A year ago Conrad would have turned red and jittery and _scandalized _to be called a faggot (_and then of course swallowed it down and pulled the better man act and turned away and left that anger festering-boiling-rotting until his next judo-exercise class where it would only get worse_). Now, after one month and one very obnoxious man, it was becoming an alternate form of punctuation. Worth jerked his head again, back to business.

"C'mon. Pop me one."

"No, Worth." He was getting angry. He didn't want to get angry, which only made him angrier. His fists creaked, his neck going tight. "The packet."

"Nope, no snack baggy till puppy does his trick. Yer fist, my face. They kin chat over Myspace firs', if yer fist's as much of a fuckin' princess as you are."

"Worth. I'm warning you." About what? When had anything he had _ever_ done required a warning, or even permission? "Shut up."

"No."

"Shut _up_."

"Get pissed," Worth whispered in that grating voice of his, loud as fuck in Conrad's hot ears.

"_No_."

It was a shout and the second it was out, he knew he'd lost the game. Worth just jerked forward and laughed in his face, all teeth and brutal noise, which only pissed him off _more_ so he finally grabbed Worth by the tacky, grody fur collar and _yanked_ as hard as he humanly-_vampiricly_-could.

"You fucking—_fucker_!"

The first time he had punched Worth, he didn't feel bad.

Rather, he didn't feel bad about hitting Worth and causing him pain; he _did_ feel bad about the motion, because it meant he had lost control. That was bad. So bad, really, that he felt compelled to tell Hanna about his automatic regret, if just to prove that he was a _really nice guy, really_, totally sane…when he would have punched Worth again in the next instant if given the chance.

That rage that led his knuckles into the other man's nose was impeccable: clean, boundary-less, devoid of fear or his even more poisonous feather-soft doubts. In all truthfulness, if he could have locked the two of them in a room and just gone crazy on him, beat him bloody, and then exited and had no one know what had happened—never connect that punching berserker to the name and reputation and the glasses and the sweater-vest of Conrad Achenleck? He would have.

How could he be a nice guy if he would _do_ that?

Now was his chance to be an asshole: door was closed, Doc wouldn't talk. Stupid thing was, he wasn't good at being pissed and violent and homicidal. Not yet.

But he could sure as fuck try.

The vampire's fist hit Worth across the chin and it hurt _him_. Caught his wrist funny; made Worth jerk, then the older man creaked his chin around and drew in breath to laugh again and it was fucking _on._ Conrad lunged forward and slammed his fist into the bony man's side. Every bit of him prickled when Worth's arm thwacked across the back of his neck and his face went straight into the fur, which muffled his clubbed-seal noise when Worth punched him in the fucking _kidneys_ with his built-in brass knuckles.

Then he was three steps away, stumbling to the desk without even realizing he had been shoved there. The vampire bent over, gasping raggedly out of nothing more than twenty-seven years of habit and adequate experience with kidney-shots. He heard the lazy smack as Worth clapped his hands together and rubbed them, pivoting on the ball of his creaking loafers almost gleefully.

The vampire could practically smell his smile. Conrad didn't think. Too much anger for that. He just wrenched himself up from knee-level, seeing one big smear of concrete and the white blur of lab-coat, and charged.

Charging, bad idea.

He cried out as he went sprawling, shunted underneath Worth's arm, sweater-vest yanked up over his head. His knees hit the concrete with an audible crack, agonized curse bowled over by Worth's nasty chuckle.

"Course y'd land on yer knees," he snorted. His hip was already propped against his desk when Conrad struggled to his feet, skin so cold it burned. Asshole was already reaching for another cigarette, eyes lazy. "S'yer position'a choice, ain't it?"

The vampire was so angry he'd already charged and been deflected a second time before he realized how well the first run had gone. The second time Worth punched him in the gut and shunted him into the desk, Conrad was hit with two simultaneous realizations. Worth had been doing this a hell of a lot longer than he had, but the asshole also wouldn't kill him. He was too fun to have around.

Conrad had always _been_ punched and never done the punching, so his skill was vicarious at best. Luckily, his ineffectiveness was actually making it hard for Worth to get hits in on him: he struggled and elbowed at close-range and limbs got locked, and in the chaos Conrad actually managed to force Worth's skinny ass against his own desk and just start _smashing_ on him.

The rush of adrenaline and pure victory when he rammed his fist into Worth's ribs and heard the airless, half-agonized _oomf_ noise the other man made—it had no match. So he did it again. And again, and _again_, like a kid with a new toy. His mouth was aching at the corners where it was drawn up-up-up in something that wasn't a grin but felt just as good.

There was a quality to that sound that was directly connected to his fist: no audio recording device would do it justice, ever. Conrad was a good deal heavier than the doctor (and bursting with a great deal of misdirected and life-long fury) so it took Worth a few grunts and blows to get his knee up and half-kick Conrad away.

"_Get_ some."

Worth grunted it and shook his coat straight, leering through a cut lip. Conrad could smell the blood, but for some reason he stuck on that damn phrase. It was one of those stupid in-fight things people said just because it was so fucking cliché: just because they were trained by movies and TV and rancid pop culture that, if they were ever in a fight, people said shit like 'get some' and 'your funeral'.

Suddenly Conrad hated Worth for being so fucking unoriginal. Hated his nose enough to break it. Hated his heavy breaths enough to smother them. Hated, hated, _hated_, and before he knew it, all of it had broken out.

"Get some? _Get some_? Who fucking _says_ that?" he nearly shrieked, blindsided by his own pent-up rage. He grabbed up a seedy magazine from the edge of Worth's desk and chucked it at his head. "Read a book, asswipe!"

"Spectin' fuckin' Shakespeare?" Worth snarled, ducking aside and balling up his fist.

"Expecting a high-school—" Yes, he'd seen it coming but there was the fist in his gut, now, _deep breath_, "—h-high-school diploma!"

Something told Conrad he wouldn't be taking this so well if he were human, which made him half-grateful for his vampire state. The punches and the pain just sort of dissipated when they hit his cold skin: the pain was locked in, frozen, and would ache later, but there was no fear of cracked bones and that let him rip loose like the demon his quiet chest said he was.

Worth was every kid who had ever made him fear for his own skin or made him pause before getting on the bus in the morning, and he made the best goddamn _oomf_ noises in the world.

They wailed on each other like two snot-nosed kids behind the lunchroom. Punched. Kicked. Twisted and jabbed and Conrad found himself aiming for kidneys and ribs and all the places his throbbing instincts were telling him that blood was pooled in Worth's meatless body.

They knocked over the pathetic tree and sent his roller-chair sprawling. He punched and punched and _punched_ until, mid-swing, Worth managed to clothes-line him and slam him down to the concrete, where he hit like a sack of nails.

Pain jolted up through his back, breath gone and for a moment he didn't pretend to breathe. The vacuum sat heavy and right and tight in his cold chest. The dark, buried place in his mind snarled that he was already _dead_, so this loser couldn't kill him.

Invincible. Fucking invincible. All it took was dying to get there.

"Y'drive me fuckin' crazy, Connie," Worth hissed right above him, knees pressed hard against his sides. The doctor's hot breath bathed his chilled face as the other man stole the hard, furious words right out of Conrad's mouth.

Wrestling him back down to the ground when he bucked, the gleam of Worth's eyes told the vampire it was not at all a sentence of mockery or repackaged pop culture: at that moment, at the least, Conrad genuinely annoyed the _fuck_ out of Worth.

The vampire felt a sudden, gritty burst of satisfaction that he was getting to the other man. At least the cluster-fuck of aneurysms was mutual. They were getting closer every day, which shouldn't have been good, except that it was a knock-down drag-out kind of close and they were _getting_ somewhere, damnit.

Worth had never been this aggravated before. Conrad had never done anything about being aggravated. Not only that, no one had ever wanted to _murder_ Conrad before, and the fact that he'd managed to intentionally piss someone off that badly was almost a badge of honor for him. Progress or train-wreck, things were still _moving_.

"Now," Worth tried not to pant and failed, high brow gleaming with sweat. "Doesn't that—"

Conrad hissed at the sound of Worth's voice and it came out of his very toes, as did the next attempt to sock him in the face. His own cool blood was leaking past his teeth from his split lip, driving him into an unholy rage. Worth growled right back like a mangy dog and muscled Conrad's shaking arm down, baring blunt, ugly teeth in his face. Then he wrenched Conrad's arms apart and slammed them down on either side of his head with Herculean effort, the same entrancing blue-green vein standing out in his rough neck.

"Doesn't that make _y'feel better_?"

Conrad fucking _roared_.

It was one long, wordless purging of noise, just to get out all of the anger that had been building up like heavy-metal poisoning for years. He'd hid the symptoms, avoided the source, but it always grew.

With that noise, he forced out all of the tiny nagging offenses that were really so lethal, like being too much of a wimp to send a overdone steak back just because it meant confronting the waiter and being obnoxious except it wasn't _obnoxious_ it was just getting what you fucking _ordered_—and being so fucking agreeable and willing to compromise, knowing that if he _hadn't_ scraped by and lucked out and picked up Millie's number and gotten off on his own with those first few commissions, he _would_ be stuck in an office and he _would_ be picking up the boss's cappuccino and figuratively bending over for him every single day with little more than a _yes sir of course sir when is that head designer position opening sir_? Or would he be bold enough to ask? Would he just sit there and do the best work he could and stay quiet and hope that someone would reward him for sticking by the book and being so damn humble just like the fucking bible said to be?

There were so many losers, just like him, who thought that abiding by the rules was going to get them places—thought that running back for two more creamers was going to _get_ them places, because that's how society _worked_.

Climb the ladder slowly, and somewhere there was a mathematical equation that directly related creamers and success and none of it ever failed. _Ever_.

Conrad's hands were shaking. Every bit of him was shaking, his undead _brain_ was shaking and wondering how he had missed so much misery by such a close margin and missed so much _life_ by such a long shot and _fuck_, punching Worth was quite possibly the best thing _in his life_. He liked punching Worth. He wasn't supposed to, but he did. How did he turn out to be this much of a fucking loser that he'd never cared enough about anything, even himself, to punch anyone in the face over it?

"Fer fucks _sake_," Worth huffed, exasperated, like the other man been burst out crying at a Golden Girls finale. Rolling his eyes, he slapped the vampire on the nose mid-roar. It actually shut him up, albeit with an alarming and dangerous snarling noise. At least those blood-red eyes were wide and cognizant behind Conrad's glasses, even if they were pinned on him in a distinctly _kill you now_ way.

"What a fuckin' chick. Swear I'd send you cryin' ta the blood-bank if you didn't have such nice snappers."

Conrad bared his teeth, quick and sharp, which provoked an instant animal noise in Worth. It slipped into a purr, sweetened with one of his twisted smiles. He leaned down and patted the vampire on the cheek. His dirty mouth was way too close, but for once Conrad wasn't the slightest bit afraid: if Worth tried any shit, he knew he would fucking bite down and, regardless of whether the bastard would like it or not, that was a victory.

"We'll do this again sometime, eh? Meantime, you keep brushin' yer teeth for me, princess." Worth reached up and, from places unknown, the blood-bag socked Conrad in the chest. Then Worth's low, smoky voice got even lower, his thumbs scraping over the vampire's white wrists. "I got plans for 'em."

"Fuck you," Conrad said, surfacing from the madness with two perfect words for the man on top of him. For the first time, it didn't mean something hysterical and offended and pitifully reactionary. At last, it wasn't a bark without a bite, even if that meant the latter was inevitable and Worth's neck was bared above his mouth, warm and tough.

Worth's dirty-ass grin—little more than a twist at the corners of his red-smeared lips—was satisfyingly instant, assuring the vampire he would never run from anything.

"Christ, who the hell wouldn't?"

For the first time since his death, Conrad looked forward to the next time he got hungry.


	3. Bite Me

A/N: ConWorth ConWorth ConWorth! Kisses and sexes and bickering, oh my!

I'm not a masochist by any means, but I'll take this opportunity to emphasize one very important aspect of masochism that many fans don't consider: YA NEED TO BE WARMED UP. You can't break Worth's arm and expect him to beg you to break the other one. Start small, build up. Not everything feels good unless prefaced by things that DO feel good.

Also this was inspired by Doctors Orders by RaeHimura my amazing Beta (she saved ittttt from a messy purple-prosey grave in so many ways) so you should go read it. It's awesome. Yep.

_Warnings: intense sexual content, vampire blood shite, language_

_Summary: He bit him. Finally. Too bad it didn't stop there, but when was it ever simple with Worth?_

* * *

Bite Me

* * *

How?

Conrad wanted to ask it again, shoot it like an arrow and project it _away_, but this time it involved far more than Worth just being an asshole and far more of _him_ and some truly concise moments of insanity. Still, how had this happened? How had this become _okay_?

He wanted to ask it, but awful slicing rhetorical questions weren't rhetorical if they had answers.

The first Debacle non-withstanding, it all started on a Thursday night under the flickering bulbs of Worth's operation room, storm slamming wave after wave of dark rain into the mouth of the narrow alley. It was the night he finally bit Worth in the neck. Unfortunately, true to his recent streak of failure, that was all he managed.

They were locked in his back room while thunder worried at the five-foot-thick walls, arguing heatedly about exactly whose fault it was that Hanna was in the next room bent over a bucket with a massive concussion. Conrad was the wrong one to interrogate: most of the 'battle' (if you could put such a label on so much running and screaming) was a horrific blur to him and he couldn't even say how Hanna bewitched him out of his nice warm apartment in the first place _and into the rain_. Regardless, Worth found plenty to ask him about and even more to accuse him of.

The pseudo-doctor was being truly horrible, and Conrad didn't have much patience left: most of it had bled out of his leg where the shape-shifter's claws had dug into him, leaving him stinging and generally pissed. And he was _wet_. They argued about stupid shit, truly stupid shit—in the way Conrad would learn Worth only did when bored or really, truly worried—and then, at the peak of their clash, Conrad made a stupid vicious hanging threat and Worth got in his face with a scathing _pah_.

"Whaddya gonna do, _bite me_?" he sneered, and, before he could really think about it, Conrad did just that.

It was cumulative in the deadliest of fashions. He was sick of Worth testing him. It didn't lessen after their last fight but actually increased, and the looming insanity waited until that _very_ moment to hit him all at once. With his own eyes red, it seemed like the perfect thing to call the asshole on his biggest bluff and demolish his own biggest fear.

So Conrad grabbed him by the front of the shirt and just… bit into his neck.

The puncture was so solid it was like someone stapled his brain. Ka-chunk, that's what it felt like, as Worth went stiff under him. The older man's hands clawed _hard_ into his arms and the first trickle of hot blood hit Conrad's tongue, slipping out from under his teeth.

He clenched his eyes shut as the first pulse of heat stunned him, white fingers twisting in Worth's shirt, which was all the vampire managed before Worth rammed his knee between his legs with enough force to kill a small animal.

Conrad crumpled immediately, fang popping out and lungs fwooshing shut in shock. The up-ending of his world was helped along by Worth bodily shoving him away as one of the doctor's hands clapped to the messy wound in his neck, face screwed up in the sharpest of furious agonies. Conrad hit the floor, hyper-salty taste of blood on his tongue just confusing him further. The older man bent over, took the deepest breath Conrad had ever heard—it mirrored the breath he wanted to take to help two very important parts of himself re-descend—and then let it out in one room-filling foghorn of noise.

"FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUCK."

He would learn that there wasn't anyone in the world who could draw that single word out as long as Worth could, nor put so much roaring incredulity in it, but he was too busy nearly dying on the floor to really take note of it.

"Ah! _Agh_!"

Conrad heard him slapping around above him, voice rough with pain. Tried to make his own eyes uncross in the dark of his lids. Tried.

"Gnh! That fuckin' _hurts_!"

"Thought you—liked it—" he rasped, trying to smirk and be bad-ass and superior on the floor (think Ted Kord, Ted Kord about to be shot but he manages one last jibe before getting his brains blown out) but it came out as a kittens mewl and the 'oh god oh god oh god my nuts' expression intrinsic to every man was locked on his face. Returning the favor of his earlier ignorance, Worth was too pissed to notice.

"Shit don't _work_ like that!" he snarled, roaring again and stomping his foot. He stalked over to his cabinet and fumbled around one-handed, getting tiny red smears on everything. He knocked over a row of bandage-rolls and scooped one from the floor, pressing the whole thing to his red-painted neck. "You got no fuckin idea! God. _God_. What the _fuck_ do you think—agh!"

Then Worth stormed out and the door slammed and Conrad, now able to pry his hands from the front of his pants, heard something clatter far away in the next room.

"You leave him at home next time, you got me kid? You just fuckin' keep him outta my office! Royal fuck-up he is, god _damn_ it—"

Another door slammed. Conrad didn't know whether to feel unforgivably pathetic or a little grateful when the zombie came in to check on him, opening the door right as he got to his knees to reach for the handle. It was somehow nice to have someone see the utter failure on your face and not betray any emotion: no urge to mock, no want to pity. Imhotep—or whatever he was that day—didn't eat, didn't sleep, but he didn't judge either. Hanna's partner silently offered a hand, just like he did when the artist was first turned, and Conrad bit his lip and took it, limping for a few steps on the dead man's dry arm until he could manage himself the rest of the way home.

Since he had sunk his teeth into someone's neck and not died, of course he considered the option of, kinda… being a real vampire and going out and finding unfortunate people in alleyways and sucking them dry. Those thoughts were short-lived. He was strictly an acquaintance-biter, and apparently limited himself to the assholes who deserved it.

But he was beginning to believe Worth's totally loaded statement that he needed fresh blood to survive: the sensations and vitality he got from his only two scrapes with it were too intense to deny that it was… important, at the least. Vital, probably, but he was still holding out on that. That left Worth as his only option, so of course he fretted and paced around and tried to avoid it until Worth just dumped it in his lap in the most anti-climactic manner possible like the irreverent asshole he was.

"What're you waitin for? Do it."

Conrad turned around from his computer, painstakingly parting himself from possible logo colors befitting an eco-friendly copying company. Worth was digging around in his desk with his full attention, cigarette dangling haphazardly from his lip in that half-pissed _I know it was right over here somewhere_ way, so it looked like he hadn't spoken at all. Conrad had just enough time to doubt his sanity (and his brain's ability to be subtle) when the pseudo-doc threw down a calculator he had rescued from the depths of his drawers and looked straight at him, annoyed.

"Yannoe what a hooker does with'er leg on the corner?" When Conrad stared at him uncomprehendingly, Worth plucked at the floppy un-starched neck of his button-down. "Yeah, thass what I been doin' ta my neck all night, fagerella. You gonna take it or what? 'Cos any longer waitin' on yer pansy ass an I swear its gonna git cold."

Worth's shirt had been unbuttoned low. He had noticed. Oh, he had noticed.

Conrad could hardly keep his mouth from falling open. He wanted to ask _really_? Just like that, after what happened last time? But he decided with uncharacteristic firmness (and a muddy hunger three days old) not to waste the words on Worth. Worth was offering. He needed it. He wasn't one to mess with what the other man wanted—or was willing to put up with.

That was a safer thought.

So Worth stepped out from behind his desk, uncrossing his arms and Conrad put aside his computer and half-shuffled up in front of him because there was nothing else to do. Getting there was easy (ish), but then he didn't know what to do with his hands so they just sort of gravitated to Worth's stick-thin waist and docked there. Worth, taller by four inches, looked down his nose and made those four inches into four feet with one scathing jerk of his brow.

"What, we at a middle-school dance?" he scoffed, but it was low and, surprisingly, it didn't shake Conrad. This close, he was too focused on the color and curve of that one vein in Worth's throat. He and that vein had a goddamn date. (And he was going to make it scream his name. Or something masculine and hyper-confident like that.)

Once he was allowed into the cloud of warmth that clustered around every creature's skin, something finally took over and wiped Conrad of most hesitation and all fear. The vampire lingered in the crook of Worth's neck and breathed in slowly, smelling warmth and cigarettes and… human. That distinct, rich _human_ scent was one he was still getting used to. He still had to deal with the fact that he now smelled like white-washed stone, a complete absence of musk or life, but more jarring still was the answering spark in his gut that told him human also meant delicious.

He opened his mouth like he was going to bite into an apple and lowered himself to the doctor's gently-pulsing neck. He didn't bite until Worth shivered: it was something like getting the last word in on an argument. Then, red.

It was plainly amazing. There was some business with feeling like he was going to die and digging his fingers into the small of Worth's back and crushing him to him with a strength he hadn't known he possessed. That same dark area in his body growled at the answering buck of Worth's hips. The single half-choke above him lit Conrad ablaze, inflaming the rush of heat and vibrancy already tearing-healing his body apart-together.

He loved every thick swallow of it, loved the tenseness in his every inch of the complex body in his hands. Every blood-cell rioted, his mind blanking. He didn't even need to feel the hard heat against his hip to know Worth was melting and twisting underneath him, gasping deep in his wet throat every time the vampire moved: it was in his blood and fuck, it tasted amazing. Sweet, almost.

But even with supernatural ecstasy running his cold, deprived body ragged, a lifetime of anger management training and suppression came in handy. Conrad kept a hold of himself. When there was a sudden slackening in the blood-flow, he broke back—staggered, hand clapped over his mouth—and panted out of nothing but sheer emotion.

Red-black blood spilled from his bottom lip and hit the concrete with a perversely sharp splattering noise. It was a small death to pull away, to not finish it and take _all_ of it, and something still called to him to leap forward and finish.

He closed his eyes hard, steadying himself, and when he opened them, Worth was crumpled against his desk. One hand lay over the dribbling wound in his neck, his eyes fixed on the ceiling before they slowly fell to him. Worth smiled, but it was unfocused and kind of nauseated. Or nauseating.

Warm and tingling and _alive_ all over, Conrad swallowed, wiped his mouth, turned around and left. And that was it. His first time.

That said, he didn't know what the hell happened the second time.

Once there was definite proof that 'feeding' could be conducted chastely if not awkwardly (and to the general satisfaction of both parties), that should have made him absolutely immovable on the subject of its chasteness. That, however, didn't seem like an option three days later when he came for a drink and Worth turned around from his mirror like la-dee-da, business as usual. Before Conrad could move an inch, the doctor reached up with a scalpel and opened his mouth and slid it across his fucking _tongue_. Red bloomed over pink, a gorgeous Georgia-O'Keefe-esque centerpiece that Worth still managed to grin _around_ as he stepped—no, swaggered—forward.

"You're… you're crazy. God, you're _insane_."

Conrad's pure shock kept him locked in place and made his own mouth fall open like a welcome mat. That tongue was sliding against his the next second in a completely disgusting, open-mouthed kiss that Conrad's mind did not like one bit but his body couldn't get enough of. He should have kneed Worth in the nuts, but it was too late. Way too late.

The coppery tang got him biting, got him pushing. He was the one to grab onto the back of Worth's neck; he was the one to close his eyes and growl and twist against him and then oblige with a snap of his jaw when Worth's hand came down on the back of his warming neck and shoved him into his own with a pleased little _oh yeah right there_ groan.

It was messy but somehow organic and easy. The way Worth was guiding him should have been pathetic, but, truth be told, Conrad had never been very _good_ at losing control and Worth's callused hands knew the road to depravity intimately. There were other pluses: when Worth got warmed up first, his blood was unbelievably sweet. The prickle was immediate, right there at the surface, and mixed like creamer with the dark undercurrents of some chemical tang the vampire couldn't quite place. The plain facts of the whole process were just stupidly overwhelming, including his own massive erection that became obvious the second he stopped—or, lately, the second he started.

So really, all incredulous _Hows _accounted for, it wasn't all that shocking that Worth had currently managed to work him against the wall with his pants undone, even if Conrad still _vehemently disagreed with it_.

…somewhere. In his frontal cortex. Which was currently vacationing in the Bahamas while his brainstem partied with the downers and vodka that Worth had forgotten in the bathroom.

Shit.

"C'mon. _C'mon_."

Christ, who knew that Worth could be this _whiny_? But Conrad's patience was at an all-time high tonight. He abided even the arm around the back of his head, trying to push him further down as Worth downright squirmed underneath him—except squirming was never this annoying, domineering or impatient.

Part of him felt like he was rubbing his face in his pudding before eating it, but he'd been human for so much longer than he'd been a vampire: some vestige of his mortality and warm skin was telling Conrad he rather liked the whole 'lips against someone's neck' thing. It was horribly hard to ignore the base-beat of Worth's pulse tapping against his tongue, but he wasn't too hungry and couldn't quite leave the stretch of semi-prickly skin right underneath the man's jaw long enough to consider biting down. He shifted, mouthed, licked—not _kissing_—but feeling the scrub of Worth's sallow skin against his lips, the instant hiccup of arousal and impatience each movement provoked. He was in a moment of vampire-zen: namely, simply exploring a human being, even one who was currently snarling at him and kicking at his shins.

Everything about a body up-close fascinated him, especially the elasticity and warmth of skin. Textures, scents. The way it felt against his tongue, against the corner of his mouth, slick. He wasn't triple-questioning himself for once, but just doing.

Doing to a man in a dingy street-office with full intent to bite said man and suck his blood in a few moments, but yes, doing.

The illusion that the two of them could have this _thing_ and Conrad could manage to fit a broomstick between them at all times was ridiculous from the beginning: he had quickly given up on trying not to touch Worth. And really, he liked having someone's shirt to dig his fingers into, no matter how long it had gone without a wash, so long as they pretended it never happened afterward. It was the first time he had been able to touch another human being without disintegrating in his own self-consciousness, without nearly throwing up from sheer nerves, or without caring about sweating (possibly because he didn't sweat anymore but even if he was dripping from every pore he still had the feeling he wouldn't _care_).

The divine animal bliss did wonders for him and he liked it. Sort of in the same way he liked punching Worth in the face. Which could or could not happen in the next few moments if Worth didn't shut up.

"Don't gimme a fuckin' hickey, faggot. What the hell. Ain't a fourteen-year-old—fuck, bite first, _then_ suck. Is there anythin' you can't fuck up?"

Conrad grimaced into his neck but then Worth scooted up against his leg and succeeded in pushing the vampire's hand down his pants. Conrad jerked a little as the back of his hand scraped cold zipper, then fought away the bone-deep shiver (that he told himself was not at all a reaction to the healthy, rigid heat straining against his fingertips) in favor of a double-standard that highly needed to be addressed.

"You do realize the irony," he grit out, trying to think through the pulse against his cheek and the hardness in his palm, "of calling me a fag while you shove my hand down your—"

Suddenly he was face-first in Worth's neck, murfling stupidly and pushing against the hand on the back of his head. He finally jerked away and glared lividly at Worth. With his hand _still_ down his pants.

"Stop that!" he snapped, frown deepening in the face of the other man's utterly glazed expression, which was tinged with a satisfied smirk.

"What. Thought a fag was happiest when 'is mouth was full."

Conrad opened his very unhappy and empty mouth and then abruptly shut it, because Worth's own hand had suddenly reversed the double-standard to an even greater but far more enjoyable effect. The doctor's hand was wrist-deep in his pressed trousers, pushing slow and velvety against the vampire's crotch in a way that made whatever heat was left in Conrad rush to his neck. He straightened and sagged, fingers knitting into Worth's short-sleeve shirt.

His shoulders shook, mouth locked open; chock it up to the anticipation of the re-realized heat hiding under Worth's stretchy warm skin. He was back in Worth's neck, feeling his fang like an ivory point hovering above his own numb lip. Pulse, pulse, pulse under his cheek.

"C'mon," came the half-whisper in his ear, still devious but thick with sex. That was all it took. Worth had what he wanted and he wanted it _now_.

His entire body mobilized down to his cells, clenching for the puncture and the gush of warmth. He bit down and sucked at the tender puncture-wound, relishing the pull at his shoulder where Worth was twisting and yanking at his shirt. He swallowed and swallowed and found his warming hand moving in the dark below them, pressing and stroking jerkily.

One part of him railed to be touching Worth—Worth, dirty, disgusting, inflammatory, dickish Worth—anywhere, much less below the waist. The other part craved to pump at him because it heightened _everything_.

The muffled noises he made were amazing. They vibrated through his neck and right into Conrad's spine, always accompanied with a burst of hormones and adrenaline, which went right down his throat into his tight gut. The newly-turned vampire was hardly sure how he could do two intense things at once but it was all part of the same deep, red rhythm as he pulled and pushed in the other man's rough jeans and Worth arched against him, cursing raggedly and gripping the back of his head with a shaking hand. He continued harder and faster until warmth spilled into his throat and his hand in one pulse, then he pulled away.

One gasp forced clean, cold air down into his burning body, which almost blasted his mind to pieces, but he survived like he always would.

Done. Over. The concrete office sat around them, silent and cool, and for a second they just stood there, breathing heavily and shaking against each other but apart from each other.

"Oh fuck. Oh fuck," Worth panted to himself, to the mold in the walls, as Conrad just coasted down against his shoulder.

One of Worth's hands lay on his back, the other still curled on his neck. As sensation crept back into every scalded inch of skin, the vampire became very aware of their pants sagging open and the slickness on his fingers. His hand sort of fell out of Worth's pants and he wondered how this became okay with the simple addition of blood.

"Fuck. You vamps. Gotta be some kind of shit in your spit, like… _fuck_," he laughed abruptly, leaving his musings of vampire physiology and legendary feeding rapture to the imagination.

Feeling Worth's high and tight breaths slowing underneath him, Conrad was suddenly tired. Suddenly slow and a little stunned, despite the new currents of life running in his body. He tried to pull away and could only manage an inch, and then his nose was back under Worth's jaw. Feeling the warmth that maybe, in a twisted way, he was getting too used to.

Maybe—maybe—not talking about this was just going to make them slide deeper, faster.

"We can't keep doing this," he murmured against Worth's collarbone, gifted a moment of utter clarity and honesty by the retreating tide.

"An' why not?"

There was a shuffle just to his side and a click behind his ear. Worth was lighting up already. The new smoke drifted under Conrad's nose, acrid.

"Because we're going to end up fucking."

"And that'd jus' be a damn shame," Worth rasped in a tone he didn't like at all, and then Conrad was pushed away and the man's wrist was in his face, muzzy grin hovering just behind it. "Un' more time."

"No," Conrad said, grimacing at the idea. He'd already taken a bit too much out of him. He could still go for more, but Worth's pulse was flagging. He could hear it.

"No deep shit, jus' want the sting. Top it off. Jus' one more."

He was acting as if he was high. Conrad shook his head and started to turn away and then Worth's hand was back, low and carefully gripping the vampire in his awfully still-full pants in a way that said he absolutely knew what he was doing—and whatever he did, he did well, diploma or no.

"F'you take a wrist, puppy, I still got a hand free."

What was he going to say to that?


	4. Addiction is Bad

A/N: YAY HANNA. I love you and your bluntness.

Conrad's been munching on Worthneck for like… a few weeks now? A month? Long enough. And I'm probably-definitely giving you false info on vampires here, but remember that Hanna doesn't quite know EVERYTHING that he talks about.

And maybe wants to herd Conrad AWAY from exclusively feeding on Worth and, perhaps, into selecting a less diseased and/or mentally damaging meal?

_Warnings: Awkward hannatiems, language as always_

_Summary: Hanna likes to talk. Whether he does it well is still under suspicion, especially when it comes to talking to Conrad about fooling around with, er, feeding on Worth._

* * *

Addiction Is Bad

* * *

Hanna was staring at him again. Not speaking. Just staring.

Conrad had never known Hanna to hesitate over anything. Quite the violent opposite, actually, and any foolhardy flailing was always combined with endless chatter. Granted, he had only known the young man for a month or two, but Hanna Falk Cross was the sort of person to leave you, after three minutes in his company, with a rather inescapable, nay, _screaming_ impression of who he was. Especially after he got you killed.

So the fact that the irrepressible paranormal investigator hadn't spoken for over fifteen minutes _while_ staying in one five-foot-area was a little ridiculously unnerving to the older man, who was hiding in his computer at his kitchen table. Both Hanna and his zombie pal were 'crashing' at Conrad's place before going to check out a lead on something or other, taking advantage of a little central heating after braving the January city chill ('that totally almost ate my scarf, it was rad!').

It was this sideways tactic of simple _involvement_ that would find Conrad accompanying the two on more backwards adventures than he would care to count, but for the moment it was just strange to have other people in his apartment, ooh-ing and ahh-ing at his religiously geometric furniture and poking at his state-of-the-art kitchen equipment that was now utterly useless.

To be honest, the newly-turned vampire had never known what half of it did anyways. Pretty sure there was a rabbit-juicer in there somewhere, or something. He had just bought it from a specialty store, in a set, and therefore couldn't bring himself to get rid of it.

Besides, it matched his sink fixings. Who could say no to a mixer that matched the sink fixings? … Worth, probably.

Gah, Worth.

Another thorn in the vampire's paw was the glossy white square the boy had in his hands. It was a little Polaroid, fresh from the ancient (but still chuggin'!) camera Hanna had found a week ago. Conrad had taken one glance at the mess that was his floating shirt and headphones and scowled, ignoring Hanna's proud grin and returning to work with a little pain in his right temple. It looked like some sort of cheap amateur film student trick: you could almost _see_ the wires. …God, what he would have given to see wires.

The fact that he would never again know what he looked like bothered Conrad in a way he wasn't prepared for, especially for a man who spent twenty minutes on his hair every morning even _after_ he had perfected it to a science. It was just… weird. Alien. And who was going to tell him if he looked like shit? Certainly not Worth.

… Gah. _Worth_.

For a while, Hanna had looked down at the Polaroid then back up at the very solid vampire in front of him, all the while taking great gobbing oversized bites of his peanut-butter and jelly sandwich. The zombie (Frederick Filibuster today, was it?) had placed it in front of him and was rewarded with a big beaming smile and a bite so instantaneous that it nearly took Frederick's greenish fingers with it. Hanna's sidekick-partner-bodyguard had given Conrad a look both blank and oddly deferential before getting into his cupboards for the sandwich stuff, which only made Conrad uncomfortable. Hell, it wasn't as if it was to any use of him at this point. Hanna and Worth were the only ones in their immediate circle who had to eat, Veser and the lot not included.

Conrad felt like he was being cordoned into a dry, dark little world that included only him and the zombie, and while he seemed like a very nice man—corpse—_thing_, he wasn't sure how to deal with that. It was a little like a clique. An undead clique who had no use for peanut-butter, no matter how organic.

As if to draw his attention back to the real world, Hanna took a great big popping suck on each of his fingers, more out of boredom or pensiveness than anything else. Sated, he dribbled onto the textured aluminum-mod table like redheaded molasses, slouching in a way that looked awfully uncomfortable. He kept the Polaroid upright in the tips of his long fingers.

An electric-blue eye peeked out from behind the square, eternally but so _concisely_ curious. Defeated, Conrad opened his mouth with a great big tolerating sigh (he'd gotten so good at those) and was about to grit out _"Yes, Hanna_" but Hanna tilted his head first.

"Are you sure you wanna keep feeding on Worth like that?"

Perhaps it was the last of the sandwich sitting puffy in Hanna's cheeks, or the jelly on his fingers, but for a moment, Conrad simply didn't believe it.

Then his eyes widened, aghast, and Hanna snapped up straight and struggled to swallow his last bite with little muppet-like flailing motions.

"No—n-no, no! I mean, you should totally be eating! It's what vampires do! The whole … almost-living, warm-type, kinda … _breathing_ look really does it for you! You look real, uh... _pink_," Hanna finished uncomfortably, flashing him a sheepish grin and a thumbs up. "And righty's looking real good."

"His name is not _righty_!" Conrad burst out harshly, hand slapping down on the table.

"Yeah?" Hanna said in that curious tone that _clearly_ meant 'Well, what is his name, then?' and then Conrad realized he had personified his own tooth and by fucking _god_ was insanity contagious? These kooks. These… _kooks_.

All of them. Getting to him.

The quiet, adult, controlled, _blood-sucking_ artist tried to tell himself he had been normal before they all came parading into his life, knocking over vases and overturning morals and diurnal lifestyles. He had informed himself of it at least twice a day in the beginning, but, in spending more and more time with this cockeyed little circle of harpy-hunting friends, even he was forced to admit that wasn't the case. And if he had been normal, perhaps he hadn't been the happiest, sanest man on earth. At all.

Sanity and normalcy, he was fast learning, were rarely connected — and it was society's best-kept secret.

"This is not about righty," he said gravely, then hated himself the moment it left his mouth. He shut his eyes, nostrils flaring. _Righty it was, then_.

"Yeah, it is! You bit Worth, so you got righty and your neck healed!"

Conrad just stared at Hanna, arrested, as if afraid to change facial expressions just the slightest millimeter and give it away that he _had_ in fact bitten Worth. Several times. And liked it, in between all the freaking out. Moreso, if he had noticed that his number of fangs had doubled, or that his throat was once more smooth and devoid of messy tooth holes (if a bit whiter), he gave no clue. Hanna sighed and scrubbed at the back of his supple, pink, sort of… _good-looking_ neck.

Conrad bit down into his own lip, _hard_, even knowing that the god-awful smell that hung around Hanna would always keep the redhead's neck safe. Besides, he really had no wish to face the zombie. Ever.

"I mean… jeez. You've been munching on Worth for, like, a few weeks and you really don't know how this works, do you?"

_Munching?_

"I substituted an hour of psychology for my "vampire lifestyle" requirements," Conrad answered acidly, the rigidity of his posture and voice betraying how spooked he was by the mere idea of this conversation. How in the world had Hanna noticed? The young man hadn't even posed the question of whether he was—fuck that word—_munching_ on Worth, but whether or not he should keep doing it.

How had he known?

"_There ya go, puppy."_

_Conrad caught the packet with equal parts relief and grumpiness, but his frown dissolved the moment he realized that the red was almost frothy. Frothy and…. warm. _

_He looked up to find Worth sending one of those awful curly-lipped grins right at him, bags under his eyes made purple by the clammy whiteness of his skin. The doctor lifted his hand to poke his cigarette back between his teeth, fingers shaking just barely; his jacket fell down, uncovering a cotton ball taped to his bamboo-shoot wrist._

"_S'yer favorite flavor," he drawled, pausing way too long before elaborating. "Fresh."_

_His grin doubled in filth and deviousness before he swung his squeaky roller chair around and snagged up a file. _

_He didn't mean fresh._

Conrad resisted the urge to bang his head into his very expensive, very fragile table, remembering all the times Worth had taken out his confidentiality dick and waved it for the populace to see. Okay, so, maybe they weren't the most covert of arrangements, but that was by _no_ fault of his own. Worth was actively _trying_ to out them both. Not hiding his teeth-marks, un-bandaging them as soon as they quit bleeding. Exhibitionist little son of a –

"Oh, that's okay! I'll teach you!" Hanna exclaimed, snapping Conrad back to his eco-friendly, halogen-lit kitchen. The self-proclaimed investigator rarely got a chance to be an authority on things (to people who didn't think he was insane) and it showed. Hanna's stick-thin chest puffed out and he licked some of the jelly off his fingers to appear more dignified and informed. He smacked his lips, _hmmmm_-ing.

"You see, it's kinda like … drugs."

"I already don't like the sound of this," Conrad exhaled miserably, finally taking off his headphones.

"Hey, it's better than being dead, right?" Hanna said with horrible cheer.

"_I am dead_!"

"You're _undead_, which is the opposite of dead, which … still doesn't necessarily define 'alive,'" Hanna winced (because Conrad really didn't appreciate elucidations on his state of being, it made his cold flesh less easy to ignore), then shrugged. "Anyways, it's sorta like drugs in the way that, like, every person you drink from is like a stimulant. If you hop from drug to drug, heroin to alcohol to maybe LSD or something, you can't really get, like, woah, super-addicted to any of them. But if you stay on one for a crazy-long time, it's like you get stuck with it. You think you can't eat anything else. And if that person takes anything like alcohol or drugs or something, it'll taste different."

"Worth smokes," Conrad said tensely, as if realizing it for the first time. Or, rather, isolating that tang that his senses told him was special even if Worth's was the only fresh blood he'd had.

It gave him a bit of a high, a chemical tingle on his tongue. He'd just thought it was because Worth was warm. Was he indirectly getting hooked on nicotine? Conrad's teeth clacked shut at the thought, clipping his lip again.

Fuck him. _Fuck_ the filthy bastard. He should know these things! No, he _did_: that explained the grimy grin, the constant smugness. He _knew_ how much Conrad hating smoking, smoke, smokers — any and all derivatives of that senseless cancerous corporate death-trap — and here he was turning him into an addict in little gulps.

He should have known he was sipping liquid sewage when he broke a vein. Did it matter whether the cigarettes were unfiltered? Was he capable of getting not only cancer but _immortal_ cancer?

"I could get … addicted to him?"

"Yep," Hanna said with his prized, hammer-on-the-head bluntness that nearly knocked Conrad unconscious on the spot. Then the young man propped his chin in his hand and snickered dorkily, wrinkling his upturned nose. "Kinda sounds like a goopy love song, huh?"

The _oh-fuck-that_ prickle that went up Conrad's back turned his spine to hamburger and eloped with his kidneys, leaving the young artist gaping for so, so many reasons.

"How – uh, how fast can it happen?"

"Woah! Don't freak, Connie! It takes a long time, like, years for things to get that far — even though fresh-turned vamps get hooked more easily—" Hanna's oversized hands were suddenly fast at work wadding up the perfectly good and equally useless napkins that sat in Conrad's useless napkin holder that matched his toaster. "—buuuuu-uuuuut this one time I saw this totally dependant vampire who tried to drink from someone other than his host and he was like _heur-heur-urk-bllllleueeeaaaaarrrrrggghh_-!"

A few wadded-up napkin balls tossed helter-skelter from under Hanna's chin clarified any point that the awful cat-sound left to the imagination. Conrad looked, beyond perturbed, from the scattered white balls to the boy's sunny did-you-like-my-trick grin.

"And that's … blood?"

"Organs, I think," Hanna deadpanned, scratching curiously at his hairless chin. "They were squishy, at least, and smelled organy. And they looked super-important and the guy looked like he missed 'em the second they were out. And they didn't look … like, yannoe. Stuff-back-innable."

The grin was back.

"And I don't want that to happen to you!"

"Holy fuck," Conrad said weakly.

There were so many more questions that the pressure of them threatened to make his head explode, but the sound of the door opening made his mouth snap shut before he could even make a pop. Rockefeller strode in with a plastic bag and a movie, urbanely removing his black fedora and placing it on the entryway hat-stand (which also matched Conrad's kitchen table). Hanna gneed shrilly and scrambled over to him, praising his sandwich mastery: _perfect_ ratio of peanut butter to jelly and minimal squishing out the sides. The zombie smiled his dislocated-but-content smile, hand naturally resting on Hanna's curly bouncing head.

Hanna gleefully invited Conrad to come watch the movie with them. Conrad was about to mention, but not object, that it was his own living room they were inviting him to, but his jaw dropped when Hanna tugged the prize out of the plastic bag and shoved it in his face.

_Trainspotting_.

Conrad suddenly wasn't in the mood, but gave them full access to whatever un-popped popcorn they could find in the recesses of his useless cabinets. He shut his laptop, grabbed his coat and threw a furtive glance at Hanna's upturned rear, waving from side to side as he puzzled loudly over the DVD player while the dead man watched. Then he swallowed and reached for the door.

Just because he had a dealer didn't mean he was addicted.


	5. A Little Lacking

A/N: HEEEEE.

_Warnings: language and vampirism-centric nonsense_

_Summary: He knew it would be World War III to get Worth to eat vegetables, but this was a pretty good start to improving his own dinners._

* * *

A Little Lacking

* * *

The Styrofoam takeout box squeaked, almost affronted, when it hit Worth's desk. The rail-thin man craned out from behind his newspaper and over his propped-up loafers and stared. Conrad stared right back, just … a little to the left and at a crack in the mold-spotted wall.

"You're anemic."

"N'yer a pretty lil' princess," Worth muttered around his cigarette, wiggling his feet as if to spite the box. He raised his grimy newspaper with a fuck-off rustle, a wisp of smoke immediately curling up from the top.

Conrad ground his very pointy and very symmetrical teeth, not prepared to get into the good doctor's name-calling matches so early. Especially when he had a fucking _point_ today.

"I am not a pretty little princess," he said with admirable, almost lethal control. His red eyes narrowed at Worth's blatant "are too" glance. "And you are anemic."

It was positively amazing how he could _see_ a piece of information go in one of Worth's ears and get spit right back out again. Worth finally looked past his shoes, twiddling them again and managing to deal the take-out container a disparaging nudge.

"What's in the box, puppy?"

"A steak."

Worth had the balls to look up at him incredulously. Conrad slapped at the air.

"You think I would tell you you're anemic and bring you a fucking cupcake? What kind of sadist do you think I am?"

"Jus nuff'a one to keep me happy," Worth practically growled, baring his jumbled teeth in the skeezy grin Conrad hated more than starvation — which might be an option now, because the idea of touching any part of the infuriating man became suddenly unbearable. Conrad slapped his forehead.

"I _told_ you, I do _not_ — fuck it. Fuck you," he said rather unconvincingly, finger going flaccid.

No. No more of Worth's games, not when he had work to do. _At _ _home_ . Conrad pointed at the box.

"That's for you. Take it or leave it or give it to the rats in your storeroom. Doesn't matter to me."

"Hanna says he's been waitin' to chat at you 'bout somethin'. He's droppin' by tonight," Worth put in when the vampire turned with that defiant _I'm-leaving_ step.

Conrad stopped, perplexed by the suddenness of the memo.

"Wha — really? Why wouldn't he use my…"

Apparently Worth wasn't the only one who was allergic to carrying around cell-phones. Fuck. He'd come from the café, though, and brought his laptop. Guess he could get some work done.

And watch Worth eat steak. Great. Fun night.

He turned away towards his bag with a thoroughly displeased frown and relocated to a far away chair. After a little while, he heard — thank god — the squeak of Styrofoam. Maybe it would shut him up for a while. Keep his mouth full, at least.

"Fer chrissakes it's still breathin'!" Worth exclaimed, feet hitting the floor with a confounded double-thump.

"In case you've forgotten the definition of anemia, it means you have little to no iron. Blood has iron. Eat the steak and maybe you'll have brain-cells enough to do the math," Conrad said stonily, hiding a just-barely-there flush (okay probably imaginary, he didn't have enough blood to spare) while going neck-deep in his bag, unpacking his laptop and equipment with practiced flicks of his wrists.

Christ. Did he remember the way he said he wanted it cooked? He'd been hungry. He might have said 'bloody'. Might have said 'Just chop off its head and give me what's left'.

Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck. What was he turning into? Acting like a vampire in the middle of a nice restaurant, why didn't they just truss him up right there?

He had loved steak before this. But even the char on the top of Worth's dinner — the smoky infringement on 'fresh, red-soft and coppery' – made him queasy. The idea of putting it in his mouth made him gag, so the smells wafting from the box to his hypersensitive nose were the most unappealing things un-life had to offer. He'd literally walked over to Worth's office with his free fingers clamped around his nose.

Worth, meanwhile, seemed to realize how uncharacteristic the gesture was and sat staring at his gift-steak, brown and glistening innocently, with suspicion.

"This ain't poison?"

"Why would I poison my own cup?" Conrad deadpanned, sitting down and opening his laptop. Worth hmmfed.

"How kin y'tell?" he asked after a minute, pausing to light up.

About the anemia?

"I can," he answered flatly. Oh, how he could tell.

"How?"

"God, I can—" So fucked up, so fucked up. "I can _tell_ ."

And by 'tell' he meant he could taste it.

"Wassat, Connie? Didn' ketchit over the sound'a yer blushin'," Worth said with an awful grin, leaning over further.

"I can _taste_ it, asshole," he snapped, far louder than necessary.

Then he realized for the first time that the person giving blood for payment ( _hiding_ ) in the corner was staring at him like he was a total freak. For the first time since his death, Conrad was also seized with the manic, awful urge to turn and blurt out "No, it's okay, I'm a vampire! I have to drink blood or else I'll die! For real this time!", and _assure_ this unknown person of his magical compulsion and the non-consensual nature of this whole affair, because otherwise he was just a freak.

God. He shut his eyes. Since when had vampirism become the more politically correct option?

In all seriousness, though, he could tell something was wrong with Worth just from the taste of him. His blood had been almost watery lately. He was surprised it hadn't happened earlier, honestly, if just because he never saw the man _eat_ . Lamont dropped food by sometimes, always in greasy boxes, but when Worth last put something in his mouth that wasn't unfiltered and ashy was anyone's guess and when he last partook of decent protein was an even sketchier estimate.

Worth was being a bit of an idiot with their new… arrangement. He urged the newly-turned vampire farther than Conrad knew (even when in that tingly rush that stole his stomach and made his throat pulse, the one he told himself wasn't bloodlust) they should go. He would let himself be drained twice a day if he could. It was something like being a sex addict, which would have been more acceptable because sex didn't sap you of vital fluids.

Okay, well, it didn't kill you at least. Worth would usually stop just before he fell over, and sometimes didn't even manage that. A few times Conrad had to hand him an IV on the floor. Apparently that 'rigorous schedule' combined with bad diet equaled anemia, or something close to it. The vampire knew they should ease up, if just because he had more than enough fresh blood to keep him alive and awake and that's really all he could ask for.

Worth had other ideas and was very adamant on them. Conrad almost felt like a lover being hounded for sex all the time, even if he had never experienced it. He had to specifically state when he came for blood and only blood – as in, the incredibly disgusting bagged stuff – and had to face a bit of a cold shoulder when he didn't respond to any eyebrow-waggling or scalpel-flashing. Not that he minded, it got him out of the office quicker.

No matter their arrangement, Worth was still as dickish as ever. He took liberties, even, with his dickishness now that he knew the vampire needed him. Conrad always hated himself for not being able to manage one good kick in the ass before hoisting Worth, comatose, onto his own scratched-raw operating table, even if the flex of his always-skinny arms was almost entrancing now. It rendered the scruffy older man more and more like a human piñata in a way that simple blood-loss couldn't explain.

Was this what Hanna meant by getting his strength back? Conrad felt like his bones were made of steel now, muscles of cables. It felt … good.

But there was still the subject of his own meals and, subsequently, Worth's meals. Worth was an addict, not a glutton. He had his fixes — he lived off of a diet of cigarettes, whiskey, and the occasional slice on the arm — and neglected other things. So Conrad, feeling in the mood to affect something (because it was so much less about Worth not having any iron than about Conrad being the one that had sucked that iron out), had gone to a nice restaurant and gotten him a steak.

While definitely not _ too nice, it _had been a passable enough restaurant that they had garnished the slab of meat with a pile of perky carrots and crayon-green broccoli that Conrad fully expected Worth to ignore, so he was surprised when the older man dug into all of it with equal fervor, cramming a meat-broccoli hunk into his mouth. He ate so quickly that it brought something to a halt inside Conrad.

Part of him was all too ready to accept the fact that Worth was a dick and dicks, as a general rule, loved both steaks and free shit, but the other half wondered if Hanna and Lamont were sometimes the only things standing between Worth and starvation. Hanna probably reminded him to eat and stuff, because the asshole _would_ just forget to eat. Settle for lining his stomach with cigarette ash.

The only reason Conrad didn't have to worry about Hanna is that a, he bought his groceries, and b, the paranormal investigator loved to eat so much that he never forgot. It was possibly the only vestige of self-preservation the boy had. He would storm into a house swarming with vengeful ghosts armed with nothing more than a half-full sharpie, sure, but damn would he stop everything to have his macaroni and cheese.

Conrad hooked into his laptop, booting up his designing programs while the obnoxiously quiet patient in the corner continued to give blood in a _judging_ manner, and for a second there was nothing but the blessedly quiet but still-slightly squirmy sound of chewing. Then Worth did something to make the take-out box squeak again and his deep-throated cough quickly turned into a chuckle.

"This is kinda sick fer you, princess," he said with a full cheek as he bent over the box, wiping his chin with his fur cuff. Conrad grimaced all the way from his toes. Ugh, god, how much shit was in that matted fur?

Remind him why he ever touched Worth in the first place? Probably because vampires couldn't contract HIV, that was just about it. And because he … kind of did this _thing_ with his slimy, cigarette-coated tongue that really would make a nun cry. Then ask if she could have a go.

Ugh. _Ugh_ . Fuck him.

"What," Conrad said, reminding himself that the object of his detestation had actually provoked him. Worth waved his red-spotted plastic fork at him.

"Yer not poisonin' the cup, yer addin' spice." Worth drew it out long enough that Conrad looked up, the very picture of disinterested. The doctor's brow shot up deviously. "Yer fattenin' me up fer yer blood-suckin' pleasure."

"I am not!" Conrad protested heatedly, amazed at how the asshole had ever even _stumbled_ upon that concept — okay, well, he had way before he even entered the restaurant, fuck, but did Worth have to catch on so quick and be so twisted about things? Just hearing it from his mouth made everything ten times worse: Worth could read Mother Goose, not change a word, and make children sob uncontrollably.

"Y'don't want me nice'n tasty for ya?" Worth prodded, grin spreading over his face.

"Fuck, Worth, just shut up," Conrad tried to say, teeth locked and fingers tightening on his tablet.

Alright, he said it, but he tried to _mean_ it in that 'I'm the only adult in this room and I won't give you the satisfaction' way, but part of him was itching to lock horns with him, even _with_ the poor stranger ten feet away. Common decency said no one fought in public, but he was becoming quite experienced in screwing common decency when it came to Worth.

Worth just stared at him, grin growing like fungus on manure, until Conrad's lip curled, eyes narrowing in the glow from his computer screen.

"You're _anemic_ ."

"An' it tastes bad," Worth said triumphantly.

"You're fucking _anemic_ !" Conrad said louder, gripping the edges of his laptop.

"Half the population's short on some bit er another." Worth muttered through another full mouth, up-ending a flask of — was that whiskey? That was definitely whiskey. Fuck. This was going to be a _great_ night. "Iron ain't anythin' worth raisin a fuss over. Ain't even worth the price'a the steak."

"Iron carries oxygen in your blood-cells or — something! You're the doctor! Or at least you're pretending to be!" Conrad burst out, flailing at the end of his liberal arts education. "It's something that should be fixed!"

"Yep. 'Cos yer sippin' on this anemic soda-pop."

"Jesus _Christ_ , Worth, can't you just accept that someone did something slightly nice for you without exactly thinking about how they were going to suck it out of you later?"

Oh fuck. Fuck him and _words_ , they were not friends today. Conrad shook his head viciously, swapping the urge to slap himself in the forehead into gesturing angrily at Worth from across the room.

"Just — cut the misanthropic self-abasing hooey and eat your fucking steak! Now!"

There was a long silence. A long, long, cavernous, skeptical, surprised, silence during which Conrad could _feel_ Worth's eyes pinned on him beyond the halo of his glowing screen, which explained why he was glaring furiously at the color palate without seeing it, making furious little 'never cared don't care now don't see you staring at me' clicks with his tablet.

"Hooey? Are you fuckin' _kiddin'_ me?" Worth said at last. Conrad, to his intense pleasure, didn't even flinch.

"Eat your steak," he said with dangerous slowness, snapping his earphones over his ears and maximizing the color palate. "Or I'll shove it down your throat and suck it right back out again before you have a chance to swallow."

The person in the corner stared. Worth stared, too, then gave a little shrug and took another bite. This bite was different from the rest, though: it was slow and chewy, leaving much room for thought, even if those thoughts were just about the next bite of a thing he didn't get very often. The strange, surly yet equally thoughtful quiet lasted until Hanna came in gibbering about something or other that basically amounted to 'how was your day, Conman!' and totally didn't require him waiting for an hour in a filthy office.

But, eh. Whatever. At least Worth took the steak.

To be uncomfortably honest, Conrad almost felt like something had passed between them that night, although it was weird and crippled as their exchanges often were. He had the feeling Worth hadn't accepted something from someone — not just _taken_ it, but accepted the item as well as the sentiment that went with it, no matter how little of one there was — in a very long time. The next time he walked in, Worth turned around from a box of open supplies and grinned right at him. Conrad stopped at the sight, eyes wide, and was rewarded for his wariness the very next moment.

"Mornin' peaches," Worth crooned, leaning on the box. "Where's my steak?"

Life, as always, was give and take. A little cooperation was nice, but getting Worth accustomed to gifts probably wasn't too good of an idea either. Then again, wasn't it proper to return the favor when someone took you out to dinner?

Conrad considered himself a very polite person, after all.


	6. Use It or Lose It or Both

A/N: Merry Christmas Eve, folks. Have some First Time fic!

HEH. Going from Tessa's sneak-peek interview questions (and as I doubt this will EVER be addressed in canon), Conrad is a wiggly pouting virgin who 'just hasn't found the right person yet.' I intend to address the HELL out of his fact.

Really, I intend to make this fact scream my name and then ask for a cigarette. Or maybe that was Worth? HMMMM.

(You thought I'd abandoned this, huh? … Well, I kinda have. Eh. Pending abandonment, or glacial-rate writing. We'll see.)

_Warnings: language, sexual material but surprisingly nothing too explicit!_

_Summary: On the rating scale applied to 'acceptable first sexual partners,' Worth fell at a screaming negative seventeen, and yet Conrad was still there. Why, oh why, hadn't he run yet?_

* * *

Use It Or Lose It Or Both

* * *

Of all the things anyone could have told him about his future, vampirism included, Conrad never expected to become an un-living, not-breathing testament to the excuse of 'just because you saw it coming, doesn't mean you did anything to stop it.'

He knew a lot of things about his current situation, of course. Reasons and facts; assumptions that were generally correct or, that failing, were derived from a rational basis of logic. He could have pulled them out of his mental drawer like paired socks and watched anyone marvel at their perfectly pressed rationality, the conscientious wariness he had woven in and tied off with just the right amount of responsibility and restraint.

For instance, he knew he shouldn't "let things go any further" with Worth. He'd said it himself, in fact. In an unconvinced whisper, with his hands down the man's pants, but he'd said it aloud.

He also knew "if things kept going the way they were going" – like these _things_ had thoughts and aims all their own, and many lethal weapons to implement their devious ploys, and it really didn't have the slightest bit to do with Conrad's simple habit of _succumbing_ to Worth's slick, smirking mouth every single time — they were going to end up fucking.

If asked on a clean sunlit street corner before crossing, perhaps caught with a cup of coffee in his hand, Conrad Achenleck most certainly did not want to fuck Worth. His entire history, laden with events and contacts both fastidious and conservative, said he was completely opposed to the idea, and his mother would be available for a similar statement. His upbringing vehemently agreed, rejecting even a limited acquaintance with anybody sporting such bad hygiene, much less an illegally practicing quack with such a disagreeable nature. Not to mention the fact that the man didn't seem to have a first name, which would strike anyone as suspicious.

It all seemed rather one-dimensional, when Conrad thought about the opposing push: no. Just no. Why would he do such an irrational, disgusting and potentially dangerous thing with such an irrational, disgusting and potentially dangerous man?

Unfortunately, daylight and coffee and _dignity_ were now buried memories for Conrad, his libido had stolen the megaphone from his common sense weeks ago, and Worth had this awful habit of being very, very convincing once he shut up.

It was dubious if Conrad was even giving him a chance to talk, really, but all the same, evenings at the street-office were blessedly quiet except for some _noises_ that weren't so ridiculous when the vampire was painfully focused on what was causing them and how to keep it all going. He thought of it as his way of getting Worth to stop insulting him (although there were those incredulous noises when his hand slipped at a crucial point, or when he made a stupider groan than usual), but there was still a slope. Of course there was a slope, where hands brushed by a place and then went _into_ the place next time, and there wasn't a clear _yes_ but rather a lack of a no.

The line was getting harder and harder to draw, but damnit, Conrad knew what _sex_ was, even if he'd never intended on having this kind of sex-thing with a man (making them two men who didn't even really like each other and, in fact, couldn't stand each other and only used each other for sex-things?), which still kind of knotted his brain when he thought about it, so he just didn't.

Conrad wasn't actually ever thinking about the looming threat of sex when he was with Worth. Not like when he went on dates with girls from twenty onwards, with the gloomy way he obsessed and worried and wondered where the line was so he could avoid it. Or what to do if she wanted it but he didn't but really if she was that kind of girl he really wasn't interested and _god_ he would so much rather be drawing right now.

No, Conrad wasn't thinking about it: he was just _doing things_ and following Worth's lead because, while it might take a few questionable detours, it always went to the right place. Eventually he even learned to reciprocate because really, while it was amazing, he felt a bit useless just kind of gnawing on Worth's neck like a nematode while the older man's hands did wonderful, devious things at his pant line. So Worth did _things_ with him, _things_ that hemmed around _it_ but never infringed in any way that mattered. As long as they stayed scattered _things_ in the wide and wonderful kingdom of _things_, it was fine, and _it_ (a separate city-state, harshly walled and governed) was never brought up and _it_ really wasn't an option for Conrad so _what_ they were doing was all and all okay.

It was this simple habit of doing without thinking that got Conrad slammed right up to the threshold of the one act he subconsciously swore he would never commit with Worth — especially not for the first fucking time in his life.

Back hitting the concrete wall to the doctor's back room for the umpteenth time, Conrad had learned to lean forward a bit to keep from smacking his head. Spared the stars, it gave him more time to yank Worth's skinny chest against his, fanged mouth opening in a soundless, tense exhalation when Worth roughly pushed down his pants. Conrad threw his head back and moan-hissed when Worth worked a leg in between his, his cheap-but-soft slacks pressed into the front of his full briefs.

It was carefully there, until Worth pushed just hard enough to make his legs go weak, making him ride his leg as the doctor snickered hoarsely and fucked with his own slacks. The texture was too much and the promise of Worth's hard thigh underneath and the professional motions just centimeters to the left — fuck, he couldn't help twitching, couldn't help but reach out and grab Worth's skinny ass with a sharp 'pap' and dig his fingers in.

Conrad growled deep in his throat, and for the first time he was unnerved at how quickly he had gotten the hang of this whole messy, 'I don't give a fuck' almost-sex thing. It really had found quite a home in his neurotic, touch-deprived, hunger-driven head, filling it for all number of quiet condo hours before he actually got to Worth's. Before the fact that he actively _anticipated_ fooling around with Worth could register or act like a water-bucket on his burning body, Worth's mouth was sucking at his, pushing deep into him in a possessive, ruthless way that made Conrad grind against his leg with a muffled curse. His fingertips grated along Worth's protruding ribs underneath the fraying cotton undershirt, reveling in how stringy and dense he was, how goddamn masculine in a twisted, sexy way.

He was so submerged in the timeless, malleable act of groping that he made an incoherent noise of surprise when the doctor yanked him forward by the front of his shirt, suddenly pushing him onto the cot that always lay like a deflated marshmallow with a bent spine. He hit with an oomf, an insult on his raw tongue and his pants stretched like taffy between his knees. He _almost_ forgot about it when Worth was back on top of him and biting his lip (nicking himself on his fangs and Conrad was twisting up, tongue swiping off a little fresh, delicious red from the older man's cigarette-coated mouth with a blindness that was almost godly), until Worth's skinny hands were suddenly yanking off his slacks, pushing them past his knees, which made alarm bells go off in Conrad's head. _Hard_.

Past knees? Past _knees_? It was strange, new, unheard of. They had never had to go past _knees_ before, the only reason you went past knees was because you needed those knees for—

"Oh god!" Conrad blurted out in a decidedly _not_ hot way.

It was far more like a cartoon gulp, actually, and the next instant he started pushing Worth away, suddenly battling all of the doctor's needle-sharp edges instead of tugging them closer like he had for the past few weeks. The man was such a fucking pin cushion and Conrad needed him _away_, but Worth just pushed aside half of his gummy-fingered flailings and pinned him to the wheezing, ugly, awful stained mattress underneath them, face flushed underneath his stubble and his shit-eating grin.

"Don't be such a lil' fag," Worth purred into his mouth, which made absolutely no sense except that 'fag' meant whatever Worth wanted it to at the moment, as long as it was insulting. His hand wandered down Conrad's tingling chest, fingertips turning to nails and then to a brief, teasing scrape of teeth. "I won't hurtcha too much, so longs you remember ta bite down."

And he bent and oh Jesus, Conrad was going to die, his knees were exposed, _his knees –_

"_Ahhhhhh_!" he shouted in a wordless idiotic monotone, because he just couldn't fucking verbalize the immense baseball bat of_ no no no hell no not you_ beating his head to bits. He thrust a hand up between them and held it there and scrabbled for his pants, to get his shivering knees covered. "_Ah_!"

Worth cursed as the vampire half-squirmed out from under him, prickly face twisted incredulously. When he got far enough away that his brainstem wasn't lit up like a deathmetal Christmas tree, Conrad flattened to the mattress like a pinned cat, breathing harder than he ever had in his life especially considering the fact that he was _dead_. Worth, about to ravish him or steal his innocence or maybe just kiss him, actually noticed he was staring up at him like a dead fish (or maybe it was all that screaming) and cocked an eyebrow.

"The holy hell's wrong with you?"

So much. _So much_, Conrad realized in that moment. So much was so wrong on _so many levels_ that he actually had to _do this_.

"I can't," Conrad grit out, voice high and hoarse. At Worth's impatient expression (he wasn't pouncing, maybe he actually wasn't a rapist, god), the vampire shook his head raggedly and looked at Worth and then at the mattress, trying to think about how disgusting it was but mostly just thinking about how he really shouldn't fucking have to tell Worth this.

And, Christ, that it should be _in context_? He swallowed. Miserably.

Shit.

"Haven't ever. With anyone."

Worth blinked down at him, grey-ringed eyes wide. Gaze arrested. Then his shoulders eased a little and he made a vague, twirly gesture to the side.

"Ain't so different," he sniffed, glancing at him from one eye as one finger played on the exposed clammy white skin of his thigh. It slipped underneath the bottom seam of his briefs, poking in and making Conrad shiver involuntarily. "Ain't as practiced as you'd be f'ya weren't a fuckin balls-out nutcase, but you'll see. I always know what I'm doin', puppy. S'in the job description."

Conrad stared at him wordlessly, countering lust with helplessness until he realized where the schism was. Worth thought he'd never had sex with a _man_. Perhaps because the idea of never having screwed anyone was as foreign to him as never taking his first breath and at that moment Conrad fucking _hated_ him for it. That hate corkscrewed into his chest, winding him fit to snap.

"I said with _anyone_! Not a man or a woman or a … cat or a fucking dog!" he burst out, voice almost shrill with that sudden burst of suppressed resentment and hysteria. His tone finally seemed to hit home in Worth somewhere — and just as Conrad expected, the fake doctor's eyes went wider than they had a right to.

Instead of crumpling in half and repeatedly slapping at the mattress and laughing his ass off, however, Worth thoroughly surprised Conrad by jerking back as if the vampire's virgin lily-white skin had burned him.

"What the flyin' _fuck _— how old are you?" Worth demanded.

"Twenty-seven," Conrad answered hoarsely, feeling the weight of every single year since puberty dragging at his face.

Worth's retreat was hasty, immediate and filled with sharp curses: another surprise Conrad couldn't have anticipated.

Worth literally jumped off the bed and yanked his pants up. Conrad was left with his own slacks down, sprawled to the side with a shocked expression on his face. Worth's skinny, caving back was not the first thing he expected to see after such a confession, unless it was because he was doubled over laughing.

"I never — never found anyone I liked!" he found himself _pleading_, which was rather cruelly ironic because he couldn't even say he liked _Worth _— but that was getting into that whole weird emotional thing that would take years to sort out. Already across the room at a counter, Worth gave a snarl that demanded without words how could he possibly be this _stupid_.

"Y'ain't supposed ta find someone ya _like_, yer s'posed to get smashed round seventeen and wake up between some chick's legs n' pat'cherself on the back!"

"What the hell kind of world do you live in?" Conrad managed, mouth wide.

"Th'twennyfirs century, faggot!" Worth burst out, slamming his fist on the counter.

With that, the street-doctor turned and began to rummage through his cabinet with destructive energy, slamming drawers shut and finally snatching up a pack of cigarettes from where they had fallen out from between grungy half-full bottles of antiseptic. He moved to the very opposite side of his operation table, belt still flopping open like a tongue, then leaned against it and lit up. He took a huge puff while Conrad just stared at him in shock, wondering what the hell had just happened.

He had just told Worth, creepy sex savant and his personal tormentor, that he was still a virgin — and Worth was … creeped out?

Still frozen in an awkward stomach-wrinkling sprawl of shock on the bed, not committing to putting his pants back on or taking them all the way off, Conrad let Worth sort it out or think about it or _not_ think about it for as long as he needed to, which was probably more a product of his stalled brain than anything. The doctor puffed almost manically at his cigarette until the pungent smoke seemed to calm him down to something far more dense and grouchy and incredulous. More familiar, at least.

"_Fuck_."

Worth took a deep breath, not looking up. He tapped his cigarette on the nearest surface, knocking loose the centimeter of ash he'd already gathered. When he spoke, it was nearly a mumble.

"How the fuck'd you manage to get this old without yer dick jus' … fallin' int'a someone?"

That was how it happened for Worth, Conrad knew. Sex was something he had to _avoid_, probably. The older man lived in that world and felt those velvety currents and knew how to read all the right signs. As if filthiness and an obnoxious laugh didn't matter in the grand scheme of sexual interaction, he knew how to say 'my place' in a way that had women — men? — eager to see it.

Not Conrad. Lived in a padded cage of his own making. There were, after all, so many things to worry about. Impotency. Endurance. Size. Emotion. Commitment. Lubricants. Hygiene. Technicalities. Roommates. Etiquette. Squeaky mattresses.

Not _caring_ about her, most of all, which honestly made a whole lot more sense now that he was in a room with a man with his pants undone, regardless of whether that man was an inconceivable asshole.

A year ago he would have turned red to touch a woman's hand. There was a concrete wall built three feet deep around his hips and he knew it. Didn't want to risk anything getting in or out. Didn't want to … risk, period.

"I'm relatively sure that's called sexual assault, asshole," Conrad shot back thornily, then grit his teeth and lowered his voice, trying not to glare down at the mattress. "And I said I never found the right person."

There was a pause. Conrad realized he didn't know what came after a confession like that except for one, highly unlikely, stupid, teenage-movie thing, which he internally rolled his eyes at right about the time that Worth absently propped his needle-elbows on the counter behind him and fucking _said_ it.

"Y'don' want me ta be yer first."

Conrad stared blankly up at the grungy, slouching doctor with his arms plastered with needle-holes and all lengths and manner of lacerations, relatively certain he was having a nightmare.

"Why?"

He found himself asking it, _choking it out_, despite his better intuition. Not so much _why_, of course, because he knew why: he knew if he ever brought Worth home and explained this to his mother, his dick would probably be the least of his strikes against him, and that was fucking saying something. No, he wanted to know Worth's Why, because it hit him like a croquet mallet in the gut that he would even _have_ a Why. Or have a Why for him.

Worth turned and leered at him, once more dirty, stupid, aggravating _Worth_ with his dark eyes sharp and lecherous.

"'Cos no one'd ever live up to it, princess."

"Fuck it, Worth — " Conrad grit out, knowing he should have _seen_ that a mile away, but Worth waved his hand in the air and shook his head with an insistent finality that almost shocked the vampire.

"M'fuckin' serious. Ain't doin it."

There was a considerable pause as Conrad _looked_ at him – seriously looked at the man mechanically puffing his cigarette and glaring at the wall – and frowned in a way that said he hadn't quite figured something out. This didn't fit. Worth seemed like the kind of dick who actively sought out virgins just to deflower them.

"I thought ravaging the innocent would be exactly your type of thing," he decided to say aloud, and it was a little refreshing just to speak his mind after so much cramping uncertainty.

"Fuckin' thirty-year-old faggot whiners? Don't wanna deal with it," Worth retorted immediately, making another dismissive hand-gesture. This time it was a 'shooing' motion that was clearly directed towards the door to his filthy operating room. "So go out, find yer sparkly fuckin' soulmate er _life-partner_ er whatever, fuck 'im, then come back n we'll carry on."

"What — _Worth_!"

The man was incomprehensible. Idiotic, incoherent, brain-damaged. Conrad hadn't found anyone in ten years of paranoid seclusion and intermittent half-hearted searching, did the asshole think he was going to find anyone just because he was _ordered_ to? And if he found his soulmate, why the hell would he come back to fuck Worth?

"Said no."

Worth's voice was as flat and unyielding as concrete slab. The two words hit the vampire's head much like one, leaving him ringing and limp. Then Worth turned to him, glaring in a way that was almost _accusing_. Conrad stared back, realizing he didn't have the slightest clue what was going on.

"You think it's impor'ant," the doctor said, jabbing a finger at him with a revolted curl of his lip.

"I do not!" Then Conrad bit his lip, wincing as he split it again. His voice tapered off as he tapped the hole with his finger and grimaced at the muddy hue of the blood. His stomach turned nervously. "Not ... not much—"

"Bullshit! Yer gonna come back here and whine about how I fuckin' _deflowered_ you —"

"I would not say deflowered!"

"Ya fuckin' would!" Worth roared, slamming his fist on his counter again and sending a cup of unwashed scalpels rolling.

"_Okay, I would_!" Conrad shouted back as hard as he could, then slapped his forehead as all of the scalpels clattered to the ground, making a tinny cacophony his vampire ears just couldn't stand and his human brain didn't want to cope with. He bent over, grimacing. Just for a second, his entire white body throbbed. "Agh, seriously, what the fuck! Quit knocking shit over, you're such an asshole!"

"Christ, y'just don't get it."

"What? I just don't get _what_?" Conrad said louder than he'd ever intended to, teeth suddenly gritted, hands suddenly balled.

It took him a good fifteen minutes of being senselessly denied before he realized he was severely pissed off about this whole thing he was being ridiculed for — no, he wasn't being _ridiculed_ for it. He could deal with _ridicule_ as long as Worth tried to pressure him into fucking and then he made a stand and said no and he understood everything!

This ... what was this? What the hell was _happening_, why the fuck was Worth acting like _he_ was accusing and pressuring him? It was insane!

"Don't wanna deal with yer fuckin' issues," Worth snorted, like he was an idiot.

"I don't have — _issues_!"

Worth turned toward him and bent down just to laugh in his face — one hard _ha_ slap. Conrad glowered at that, stomach churning viciously. He rephrased and settled for one thing he knew.

"I wouldn't make a scene," he said under his breath.

"Yer makin' a scene right now." Worth said, disgusted, flicking his stubbed cigarette into the scummy sink.

"I _won't_," Conrad half-shouted, feeling like a ten-year-old and not really knowing how this turned around from him _not_ fucking Worth to insisting that he wouldn't be really loud or fussy about fucking Worth. But before the irony could properly box his ears in, Worth got up and left.

Worth got up and left. He just … did. While Conrad's pants were still down.

That – the complete disregard, the absolute silence except for the tap of his stupid shoes – made Conrad _angry_. Angry like he'd never really been before. No – there was one time. That awful night, when Worth was obnoxiously, heartlessly denying him even the possibility that he wasn't human anymore when he was first turned. He could hear it: _As a doctor, I hate to tell __ya__, but __yer fuckin' dead, ya sorry sob!_

It was an anger like that, hard-boiling and stinging and personal and life-changing.

The vampire got up from the sagging bed, pulled up his pants and was at Worth's skinny back before he knew it. Worth turned slightly — Conrad could see the sneer forming as if in slow motion, sparking more painful red behind his eyes, and was suddenly fucking hell-bound to stop it. So he grabbed Worth by the collar, heard something rip — he was stronger now — and boxed the doctor sharply across the cheek.

It was a glancing blow, but it was enough: the second Worth's skinny, bandaged hands dug into his collar and locked them together, a furious curse on his lips, Conrad fell into him and crushed his mouth to his.

He twisted, biting. Licked. Used what he'd learned of the wiry man crammed against his chest to _get his fucking attention_ and _keep it_.

After a few tense seconds of shifting tongues and short breaths, Worth's long fingers tightened in his button-down for a different reason. His heart rate climbed euphorically, tongue skimming the points of Conrad's matching fangs with a surgeon's precision — the only accuracy he ever retained when they were both piles of mush. Conrad bit down gently, making them sink into his slick lip with a loving sadism he hadn't known he possessed. The smell of the blood alone made his gut harden. Worth hissed into his mouth, ending with a low, ragged moan.

When he was sure Worth was knotted up and properly stinging, Conrad jerked back and glared at the other man fiercely, daring him to walk away again. Daring him to disregard him, or belittle him, or think that he wasn't fucking capable of being a man and getting out from under his own issues long enough to breathe. He could _do_ this.

The vampire would have felt desperate and stupid and too much like that ever-present dewy-eyed girl in the movies who attempts to recapture her love with one last kiss — except that Worth's pulse was hot in his ears and blood was drip-drip-dripping onto Worth's shirt and he was so fucking hard it hurt (not just at his groin but his fingers, his teeth, his eyes) and Worth was _not_ his love.

At least, not right now, and that made him oddly safe.

Conrad Achenleck had unconsciously spent his whole life waiting to carry the girl of his dreams onto a rose-covered mattress and make love to her with candles all around, and now he realized that just sounded like a horrific exercise in nerves and futility and a completely unnecessary risk of a house fire. He thought he wanted to drown in love and adoration, never able to live without his soulmate for a moment; he realized now that sounded hellish, a prepackaged heart attack with 50 ml of indulgent self-loathing and eventual disappointment under a looming fifty percent divorce rate.

He'd suppressed the urge. Thought himself too weak to even approach women. The thought of losing his virginity was something Conrad avoided at all costs, just because it brought up nightmares of hurting her, not doing it right, coming too soon, making stupid noises and generally just failing to live out a fantasy, when sex was the stupidest thing that had ever been invented by nature.

He'd had enough of a preview of that with Worth, but his messy clashes with the man had also taught him that it was only stupid if you weren't head-over-heels consumed with what you were doing. There was a strange grace to be found in carnality. A reprieve from neurosis and worries and shortcomings and (an awful notion that finally explained teen pregnancy in a way he could understand) flimsy artifices like condoms. Christ, he hadn't even thought about condoms. If Worth could make him crazy enough to forget about condoms, his vampirism disregarded, wasn't that amazing?

Now, with Worth, he had some sort of strength here. Most women wouldn't even dream of approaching him, and here he had the other man straining against him. This was good. This was perfect, somehow, the way they were matched. Each had what the other needed, things and urges that would make them outcasts anywhere else, but enough of what they couldn't stand that things didn't get stupid. Conrad had never thought about it before, never admitted it was anything but an unfortunate arrangement of necessity, but it was just … perfect.

This was what he needed — and, as he was learning, that was usually a fuck of a lot different than what he thought was best for him.

Worth looked at Conrad looking at him — staring at him like a maniac — and finally realized that he was serious. Very fucking serious in a way that probably wasn't all to do with being turned down for a fuck. The older man jerked at Conrad's shirt as if to test him; the vampire bared his teeth instantly, red now smudged over the white points, lending more intensity to his red eyes. Worth's face turned arrested, some thought process grinding out behind his suddenly wary eyes.

"I'll tear you up," Worth muttered at last, not letting go.

"I'm not going to beg," he said coldly, and he meant it. The steely note in his voice actually made Worth's brow furrow. Then he shrugged.

"Fine. This is on your head, princess."

Conrad was still gripped into Worth's shirt, waiting for more until he realized that was it. He'd been given permission. Worth swatted at his hands because he still hadn't let go, but then he did let go and felt a little stupid about it. They stared at each other in the grungy, cluttered office, the scene of their latest head-on collision. Each seemed to absorb some kind of stark character lesson about the other, then looked toward the bed.

If Conrad thought there was going to be a mad scramble for the mattress and their clothing and an instant relief from all rational thoughts, he was horribly, horribly wrong.

They parted with an implied nod and walked over and sat down in silence. Each nursed frowns. Surreal was the only word for it. There wasn't any doubt they could collectively get it up again and do what they'd just had a huge messy row over; it was just going to take a minute, and that minute was unbearably quiet, accented with nothing but a dripping faucet.

"This don' mean I'm yer faggot boyfriend," Worth said suddenly as he undid his pants, like a robber listing his conditions. Or according to his cagey body language – the tight way he ripped the belt off and flung it to the side – a hostage going over his own. "This don' mean I'm gonna be here tamorrow."

"You're always here," Conrad reminded him dully, unbuttoning his shirt.

"Not fer _you_," the older man snorted, peeling off his yellowed undershirt and tossing it onto his operating table.

They continued to undress in silence, neither quite looking at the other. The sound of clothing rustling stuck out like a sore thumb. Then, one arm out of his sleeve, Conrad looked to the side, face screwing up slightly.

"I'm a bit worried, though."

Like a dog scenting a rat he _knew_ was there, Worth got within an inch of his face, lip curled.

"_What_."

"You're the doctor, but... I've heard that, uh … the first time you have sex, studies have shown that there's a chemical rush that makes you bond to that person?"

"_Fuck_," Worth spat, heaving himself to his knees with whip-crack speed.

Conrad only managed to catch him by the elbow by the grace of god, already sort-of half laughing, utterly blown over by the ridiculousness of the whole situation. The tense, awful, echoing ridiculousness that needed to be cracked in half with a hammer. Because really, he realized in some deeply-buried place in his mind, it was just _sex_.

"Joking! Hah! It was a joke," he gasped out, then sobered slightly at Worth's utter seething resentment. His mouth shut, pressing into a weird frown. "I'm … joking."

It took Worth's suspicious glare to make Conrad realize he had never really done that before. _Joke_. Worth gave him a harrowed look before puffing out his chest and continuing.

"You ain't gonna make trouble for me," he resumed his earlier spiel with a flinty eye, poking Conrad _hard_ in the side. Conrad _oof_ed and then rubbed the spot, glaring back at him. Worth's face screwed up in disgust. "This don't mean y'kin call me at midnight whinin' bout'cher soap oprees."

"You don't have a fucking phone," Conrad retorted, kicking off his pants. _Past_ his knees and onto the filthy floor.

"Shaddup. You'd find a fuckin way. 'Sides the point," Worth growled, obviously ordering his thoughts as he peeled off his truly disgusting socks — and he looked uncommonly, genuinely distracted or off-put. "This don't mean we're gonna ride off inna the sunset together er whatever other faggy Disney shit you got loopin' in yer head righ' now."

When they were both naked and sitting next to each other on the collapsing old mattress, Conrad was visited by the novel idea that, maybe, Worth was the paranoid one.

Somehow, that simple thought made him look at Worth, something clever and slightly out-of-character on the tip of his tongue, then realize that would only delay this further and he'd had quite enough delaying. Ten years of delaying, actually. Abandoning his words, Conrad reached over the space between them. He nearly leaned onto his side to press into Worth's mouth and, after the man gave a tolerating, somewhat startled grunt, sucked at his injured lip. He could feel the shiver go through Worth's skinny, ribby frame and smirked deep in his head to see the doctor's bony fingers clenching at the air above his leg, like he wanted to grip down in a passion but wasn't giving in yet.

When he moved back, caught a little breathless by his own gall, Worth smiled inches from his mouth, tongue swiping over his own lips.

"Yer gettin' pretty good at tha', Connie. There migh' be a vamp hidin' in you after all," he murmured softly, mouth red, and then Conrad's hands were hard on his shoulders and the mattress, while never crisply white, was doomed.

* * *

They fell back afterwards with a two-fold groan that hit the moldy ceiling and stuck like wet plaster.

Conrad was breathing hard and he could hardly feel his toes and he hurt in some places but that was so, so easy to ignore with how good the rest of him felt. It just went so quick (alright, not _too_ quick and _not_ by any fault of his own) and then it was over and he didn't regret it. At all. God, how could he regret it when his skin was tight and tingling and he couldn't get his face to move?

And then that immobility sort of seized up and spread to the rest of him. It cut him off from his body and directed a little blood flow to his head, making him use it. His undead brain sat very heavy in his skull and had waited at least twenty minutes to make him aware of some very important things, like a mattress bare of sheets and the warmth sprawled next to him, which Conrad soaked in silently

When he turned over, the first noise Conrad made after losing his virginity at age twenty-seven was a low, sodden sort of hiccup.

Then he sniffed. Sniffed again. There was a shuddering sort of breath and Conrad felt Worth's wiry body go horribly tight next to him, hand poised midway through lighting a cigarette. He could _feel_ the doctor's eyes turn and hear his teeth clack together. Then the mattress creaked, low and lazy, as the older man leaned back against the wall, lighter clicking.

"Ain't fallin' fer it," Worth said around the cigarette, taking a long, long, long drag.

Conrad felt something falling dusty onto his back and realized Worth was using him for a fucking ashtray and rolled over, sort-of-victorious grin as short-lived as the grey on his white back.

"You asshole," he muttered into the mattress, slapping at his back.

He was answered only by a grunt that told him Worth was very much a lazy-ass after sex, just swimming in the musky haze it offered. Conrad didn't really take the time to deal with the fact he had tried to play a practical joke right after sex, and what that implied about him. Maybe that he'd been waiting quite a while to have a good time, and had finally found someone to have it with, no matter how untraditional.

They lazed there for an undue amount of time, a luxury Conrad would later attribute to a vague niceness of Worth's that maybe had something to do with the fact that the older man thought what he had just 'lost' (gained, rather) was sort of important, too. Still, Worth sneered when Conrad sat up and lingered uncommonly close to his face with a very particular _expression_, then gave up and gave him a disgustingly wet, squelchy smooch that was nonetheless a kiss.

The whiny plea to exchange lockets with locks of each other's hair went uncommented, as did the order to go into the main room and get him a beer. What kind of a faggy housewife did he think he was going to be if he couldn't even fetch a beer?

Conrad didn't smile then, but he smiled when he got all the way home and shut the door and took a deep breath and, the rich grey lurking beneath his clothes like a dirty fingerprint, smelled smoke.


	7. Background Check

A/N: The necessary Worth-background chapter. I totally intend to expand the hell out of his sister, by the way. She'll come in later.

I am so in love with the comparison of Hanna to an over-eager, wiggling welsh corgi that I think I might explode. Gnee!

_Warnings: language_

_Summary: In Conrad's world, it only became okay to inquire about family situations and education on the first date… even if that first date came shortly after the fifteenth dirty roll in an operation room and the twentieth bite to the neck._

* * *

Background Check

* * *

Conrad liked the mall, or he had.

The mall was where the Mac store was, so Conrad literally _had_ to like the mall, or at least put up with it every so often when he went to get his new gadget fix. He had liked the anonymity of senseless consumerism it offered in the daytime, but after he turned, it just seemed swarming with nosy window-shopping loiterers and rubber-neckers who might notice him or his _condition_. He hadn't learned the art of disappearing into crowds yet, possibly because it required effusive self-confidence and the understated charisma that said you knew exactly what you were doing. Conrad would have killed for that skill and couldn't muster it up even if he were strapped on a bed of nails.

Still, the mall had a few very nice coffee shops that he liked to hang around, if just to smell-sample all the strange mixes the younger crowd was getting these days. Pumpkin-chai-caramel was a little too much for him and eventually the smells gave him headaches, but the expansive building was familiar even when a bit more shadowy and empty and creepy at night. He knew it well enough. When Hanna suggested it as a meeting place where they could congregate before going on a 'guy's night out', Conrad didn't give it much thought, much like he disregarded that, since the zombie was always with him, they had to also be meeting someone else.

That someone was Worth, who grunted at him in the most charming manner possible as he sidled up to the dark restaurant Hanna had picked out and proceeded to act like the vampire didn't exist.

That put them both hanging around like losers as the crowds dissipated, mall cops roaming around with stuff legs, checking their watches unhappily. Conrad frowned around, looking at the last of the stragglers and thinking Hanna had better get there soon or else the mall was going to close. He'd never been kicked out of a mall and he wasn't going to start now. He settled for a little bit of people watching, generally ignoring the man next to him until Worth's heart gave a muffled skip and started beating relatively fast.

Of course he could hear it. It was understated: just a jump, another jump and a slight, almost wary increase, but it made Conrad look over. He barely caught Worth's eyes flicking away, but saw the direction. He looked that way and frowned uncomprehendingly.

A woman standing at a brightly-lit shop window, petite with long straight blond hair, looking at a purse. Her leg was cocked at just the right angle. She was obviously the kind of woman who was used to being observed from every angle and has every bit of herself hooked up to some kind of mental puppet-string.

It wasn't showy, merely well-done. She was trained. Pretty. Soft at the edges.

"Pretty sure she's gotta price-tag too, if yer that fuckin' in'rested."

Conrad's chin whipped over and he glared at Worth, not wasting time being offended. The vampire chomped through his list of available comebacks (You first, or You're so classy, or Is all you ever think about sex?) and they all sort of sucked. He knew it was bad when he smacked down his own witticisms before Worth could. In the end, he just looked at her and snorted.

"Are you kidding me? She looks like she could be your sister. If you, y'know, bathed."

Worth went utterly silent.

Then he made a little scoff that was so much more about _not_ staying quiet that Conrad raised an eyebrow, suddenly interested, perhaps for the first time, about where Worth came from and who had surrounded him while he was there.

Hanna wasn't there, yet. There was nothing else do to, really. And he was screwing the man… when he wasn't sucking his blood, that is.

Surely that afforded them a little confidence?

"So," Conrad said after a minute, flustered at how lame and canned the syllable sounded as he leaned up against the low restaurant partition, slightly mimicking the alley-doctor's body-language. Worth, true to asshole form, didn't look over. Conrad frowned. "Did you always want to be a hobo-cutter when you were a kid?"

"Wouldn'ta wasted my time with med school if I'd known 'bout _hobo-cuttin'_ as a r'spectable an' in-demand profession, at least."

"I would think anything that didn't require a degree would appeal to you," Conrad said sardonically, rolling his eyes.

"Wot, like drawin'?" Worth put in casually, making Conrad glare at him something fierce, artfag hackles raised. Worth shrugged lazily; the sound made his leather aviator jacket squeak and sent his ever-present fur collar jolting. His hands slipped into his pockets. "You don' need that scrap'a paper ta tell you you kin push a pencil across paper. I don' need one ta tell me I can do the same with scalpel and a leg bulgin' with pus."

Conrad nearly gagged, very inclined to point out that the difference between the two lay where _human lives_ took the place of the paper he drew on. You couldn't just crumple up a human being and toss them in the trash when you messed up; well, you could, but it usually got you the troubling title of 'serial killer' when all was said and done. He was tempted to cross his arms and ignore Worth and his passive-aggressive stupidity until Hanna showed up, but he realized he had never gotten Worth talking about his education — or lack thereof — before. And, god help him, he wanted a little more information on that train-wreck.

"You dropped out," he said after a little while, hoping he didn't sound too interested.

Worth, being his usual dickish self, nodded.

Conrad frowned and subdued the beginning of a tic in his cheek, knowing this wasn't going to be easy. Worth never volunteered information about himself unless he knew it was going to work in his favor, and 'becoming closer to someone' simply didn't do it for him. Still, Lamont had implied that Worth had been on the opposite side of a economical gap that put his best friend solidly in a gutter, and the vampire just didn't understand the road between Armani and the third door to the right in an alleyway. Someone could drop out and still get a decent job.

Or maybe a decent job was too much of a low blow for Worth. A surrender to mediocrity. Worth was anything but mediocre. The drugs alone were proof of that: he would rather be dead than boring.

"Did your parents try and drag you back?" Conrad asked, knowing that's what his own mother would have done. He glanced at Worth's severe profile. As he watched, the back-alley doctor palmed out his pack of cigarettes and plucked one out, the motion as familiar as it was strangely calming. Conrad realized he was getting some sort of positive Pavlovian response to the semi-bitter stink of dried tobacco about the time Worth stuck one in his mouth, lit it, and actually replied.

"Yeh, after a while. When they realized I wadn't shittin' em. Did whatever took 'em jus' short'a the alleyway."

Though moderately apathetic, the disgust in Worth's voice was obvious. His folk were so proper, they didn't want to step foot outside their straight-laced birdcage when they heard he'd disappeared into the city. Conrad's brows inched up.

In reality, his parents had _tried_, as a last, _desperate_ resort, to come see him in person, but he'd moved the day before, leaving nothing but water-stained cardboard boxes and a whiff of peroxide. He may or may not have been tipped off by Lamont, who was being harassed at every angle by his parents, who were royally torqued he'd led their baby golden goose off the track.

Everything else, after all, had been perfect. Perfect environment, squeaky clean morals and commendable parenting. Plenty of broccoli. No traumas, no shortages: just what America was for.

It was the reason they moved, so what was he doing on the streets?

He'd gone from eating all of his vegetables to dropping out of med-school (or so it seemed to them, who had only seen his crisp button-down shirts after he'd bleached the fuck out of them and gotten rid of most of the muzzy red-brown stains). So, they figured, the boy with the dark, lazy eyes and the big hands and the second-hand shirts must have been the catalyst. Lamont's hair had always had that shine that made you never sure whether it was unwashed or slicked down, but an easy, languid smile pulled you off of that. Pulled girls in even if he didn't have enough guts to keep them.

Mum didn't like Mont's ways with ladies, but Worth knew that Lamont was a slave to his 'womanizing tendencies', if you could even apply that label to his serial, moony surrenders to girls. His best friend knew he had soft spots in that hulky chest of his and was always annoyed when they hit the surface like bruises in a peach. _Sure she was the one_ was something that Worth would punch him in the nose if he ever said, but it always lurked obnoxiously close to the surface, bitten back and sighed into the wet mouth of a beer bottle.

When Worth — Luce, still – went off the map, his folks went to Lamont. Monty dodged them for as long as he could, but they eventually found him and when they found Mont (he was always notoriously weak in the flesh, especially when confronted with the fiery eyes of a mother), they found _him_.

"Bribes. All that shit," Worth continued, dark eyes focusing not on the leather shop sign across from him but elsewhere. He blew a stream of smoke from his narrow nose, voice bored. "Went on and on bout how they weren't so yanked off 'bout where I was as where I was goin'. Concerned parent shtick all the way."

First, remorse. You were so smart. Could have gone so far. Been a top-notch physician. Had a practice. Such good grades.

Then, anger. We paid for it. Had faith in you. Brought shame on the family. Wasting your life. Going to get arrested.

Trusted you to take care of yourself, so what are those scars on your arms?

He was pretty sure they didn't bring up half of those points, but it was so damn cliché he just tuned it out and assumed the worst. Wasn't interested at that point, and it was just a goddamn phone-call. They didn't know where he was and it was going to stay that way. He hung up when he felt like it and was back to starting his own 'practice' like nothing had happened. No, he was picking his own path for the first fucking time in his life, leaning down and clearing out wreckage of old basements and using his back and getting his hands dirty.

He was scraping by and he loved the sting. Sick of books, except for how-to's with thick-inked pictures and sharp verbs like _incise_, _void_ and _stitch_. Sick of theories, sick of the lofty philosophy knotted into it all like brambles, sick of staying up all night and competing for a number.

He only got pissed back once they bit down on Lamont and his folk. Had to see them one last time to tell them to fuck off. They were panicking, he knew. Only what normal people did. They regretted it later. Told him so, when they managed to get him on the phone again. They knew, _knew_ Lamont a good man, they were just striking out at anything that seemed suspicious.

He forgave them, of course, if _forgiving_ at all applied to the hand-wave and the irritated roll of his head. He just didn't have the stamina or the interest to keep up a grudge so time-consuming and exhausting. They were his fucking family. Mum, dad, sis, all that shit. You couldn't just pack them away and send them to fucking Antarctica.

"And your sister?"

Conrad's voice almost surprised him. The woman at the window was already long-gone, probably judging the purse too fancy for her purposes. The display she had been looking at suddenly went black, throwing the purses into shadow.

Worth glared out into the mall as lights went out one by one, creeping up the hallway like an eclipse.

"She dropped in. Means well." Worth took a long drag and finished with flatness almost alarming, "Ain't her deal."

"Guys! Guys, guys, guys!"

Startled and almost disappointed at the crack in their rare peace, Conrad sighed tensely as a tiny, bandy redhead came barreling towards them down the mall hallway, a fine sheen of sweat covering his face. Wondering where he could have gotten it in the dead of winter (and knowing the answer wasn't likely to be positive), the vampire stood tiredly next-to-but-apart-from Worth until Hanna was practically in their faces, already gibbering about something that didn't matter.

"Sorry we're late, there was something going on out in the parking lot like some kind of turf-war between a troll and a goblin or at least that's what I thought but it turned out that one of the guys was just really short and the other one was really ugly and he hit like, really hard or he tried to but then he said some choice words about Ken and I had to open up a can of something on him and stuff—"

"Would'ja juss' shaddup fer a split second? I came fer a drink, not an earful, _Christ,_" Worth barked, stepping forward and cuffing Hanna on the head with his bony fist. Conrad heard the crack and winced.

"Owwww_worth_," Hanna whined, buckling at the knees with a pathetic twist of his mouth.

Putting his stitched-up hand on Hanna's arm, the dead man gave Worth something of a challenging look (Conrad had sort of learned to read those miniscule tightenings around his blankly glowing eyes). The street-doctor returned it with a look so bristling with righteousness and _I was here first, bonebag, and you don't tell me how I treat my patients_ that the zombie mildly looked away, probably figuring Hanna could stand a few whaps if it meant he would continue getting the kind of medical assistance only Worth could offer. Cowed only for a split second, the paranormal investigator was once more a wiggling, over-exuberant corgi in seconds, nipping at their heels until they started moving towards the exit and a very special bar the young man had selected for that evening.

Even with the surly, tired-looking mall-cops tracking their every step, Conrad found himself lingering inside the dark mall. There was a surreal aura he just couldn't leave behind, maybe gifted by the snippet of Worth he'd seen. He pushed the door open, cold air streaming in, and looked back at the shadowed purse display, remembering the woman's silhouette and Worth's flat expression. He stared, frowning, before Hanna skittered back and shoved him in the small of his back, loudly and proudly and perhaps erroneously promising Conrad's first drink on him (because er, oops, not _out of him_, but he was sure they could spike it without anyone noticing, it was a really cool club but most importantly it didn't have any lights but vampires could see in the dark, right? So they were cool, of course they were cool, so _come on_.).

With a smile, knowing there was time for questions later, Conrad closed the door behind him and set off into the night with his friends.


	8. Survival

A/N: I hope we'll get to see some version of this some day :[

_Warnings: language, implied plot (placed in some hypothetical not-so-distant future after the upcoming canon Abner arc), The Little Conrad That Could, ambiguous CasxFinas and the beginning of a wee arc._

_Summary: One of these days, Conrad's Suck will reach critical mass and he will be forced to undergo character growth._

* * *

Survival

* * *

The night was quiet in all the ways that mattered, despite the group's most earnest attempts to disrupt it with Queen karaoke and drinking games and pog competitions.

Adelaide was gone for the time being. Abner was still out there, and that rat of his still had it's sharp little teeth, though Conrad had more than enough blistering spite left to hope that he had popped a few out with all that arm-yanking when the little shit clamped down on his good silk button-down. Fucking rodent.

His scrapes and all the asphalt-looking wounds (he never thought he would get to apply that word to his laptop-and-drink-coaster life, _wounds_) from that fucking terrifying silver-spitting shotgun were healed, too, with a little … untraditional help from Worth. Of course, the hack didn't waste the opportunity to gloat about being a fucking medical genius even on his back with his eyes shut, but Conrad, ravenous, shut him up using one of the four guaranteed techniques he had learned over the past half-year. Time with Worth, though in some ways the hardest thing of all to stand, had taught him some ways to minimize the doctor's second most obnoxious element: his mouth.

He thought it a bearable arithmetic and an all-too-natural battle of equilibrium, but mostly just declined to comment on why he spent so long pressed against Worth's caving, gently rising chest afterward, long after the last of his skin had knitted over and left a pinprick coolness that couldn't hold a candle to the relief he felt being where he was, how he was. Which was … undead, in a filthy street-level basement with a softly chuckling hack, whose long and dirty fingers happened to be resting across his warming neck. Something Conrad liked a bit, but didn't burrow into. At all.

But in the end, everyone was alive, so of course there was a party to celebrate.

Hashed out over cell-phones in the space of a day, it was staged just soon enough that the ragged, manic appreciation for life hadn't quite departed their bodies but the worst of the physical disfigurements had healed. This was a winning combination that found everyone drunk and laughing. By eleven, their ragtag gang was spread over the Rabbit Hole in the niches that suited them best: Worth playing bloody knuckles with Lamont amidst a battleground of empty shot-glasses as Hanna and Veser bawled out song after song on the karaoke machine, yanking the battered plastic mic back and forth without a hint of spite or coordination. Even Toni and the dead man looked fast on their way to starting a permanent friendship.

The feeling of _family_ was altogether overwhelming and a wonderful thing, but it still found Conrad edging out the side door after the two stragglers that he was quite shocked Hanna had actually roped into the celebration. Then again, they were alive after that disaster, too … or had survived. Conrad never thought there would be such a difference between the two terms, or that he would be so unbearably sensitive to it.

The vampire shut the metal door quietly behind him (like anyone was sober enough to hear it, but having Hanna chase after him like this would be a nightmare) and hurried around the corner, hoping they hadn't already taken the small and furry express over the rooftops or something.

Conrad let out a squeezed and unnecessary breath when he turned a corner and saw them walking under a streetlight: Cas' long legs carried him like a strolling leopard as Finas powered over the concrete at a deceptively slow pace, no hurry present in either dead man. At the noise (or maybe the heat or the change in the wind), the taller vampire turned around, the nicotine-yellow light of the streetlamp catching his spooky white eye. He stopped; as if the same mechanics connected them, Finas turned around curiously.

"It's the failpire," Cas drawled, not even bothering to hide it behind his hand. Hell, he practically said it _to _Conrad, grin lazy and challenging and Jesus Christ, he did not like Cas. He didn't like Cas even _before_ he round-house kicked him in the face, and he liked him less after the show-down with Vanslyk. Sure, the Italian bastard might've saved his life once or twice in the midst of all that running and screaming, but couldn't he have done it _without_ the showboating or the whole using-him-as-bait thing?

Swallowing that dislike (and his stupidity, god, such stupidity had led him out here, surely they had better things to do and surely they weren't going to hesitate at rubbing that in his clammy face), Conrad cleared his throat and tried not to clench his fists. His altogether sodden and wet spirits were slightly buoyed by the _look_ Finas gave Cas. It was a half-chastising look he sort of deserved, because in Conrad's opinion, during the church incident he'd at least proven that he was on the road to becoming _less_ of a vampiric failure.

And that really was the reason he was out here, daring to chase them down. To … lessen his failure.

He could survive the bagged blood. He knew, _knew_, he should start looking at hunting as an option, but his human stomach (still a phantom organ in his black-lacquered insides, locked in a painful spasm like those confused limbs that refused to believe they were gone) couldn't take it. But when he thought on it a little further – and there was always five a.m. for that – it wasn't just the thought of hurting other people that stopped him from _becoming_ a vampire in the ways that mattered and would maybe make his unlife easier.

What he couldn't take was the night that loomed, dark and foreign, all around him, fraught with all the fears he'd had as a human – fears he didn't know how to convince himself didn't matter anymore. What he couldn't take was startling himself: speeding up because he was a little behind Hanna and then having his entire body stolen by this euphoric, hard, godawful _swoosh_ he wasn't ready for, which sent him crashing into a pile of trashcans. In the end, it wasn't even about the spaghetti stain on his sports jacket.

It was the spontaneous transformations into bat. The unfortunate incident with the rice that kept him up until sunrise and made his knees hurt for days, leaving him crawling to his bed with the strongest sensation that he was going to vomit out his alien insides, fried by the heat outside his condo. There were so many things Conrad had done that he hadn't meant to do, or that he _meant_ to do but not as extremely as they ended up happening.

Breaking Worth's bones, for instance.

It was just a fracture, if he could actually excuse himself for causing _just_ a fracture in the man that he was sort of in a relationship with. Caught up in whatever happened when Worth smeared that wet, ashy mouth of his across his own and shoved the palm of his hand to his crotch and his vision went white, the only notice Conrad received for the small, fleshy click in Worth's forearm, underneath his tight hand, was the lanky man's sudden and sharp arch and the monkey-like bearing of his battered teeth. His starved body shook hard, adrenaline suddenly a palpable stink in the air around them, and the panicked vibration was released a second later in a whine that was slightly higher than normal, slightly weaker than normal.

Conrad could sense the difference like a hint of decay in the strong, buzzing push of sex and that slammed down like cold water on his haze. That, of course, was an easy way of saying that he flipped shit and scrambled away, clutching at the betraying hand as he realized what, exactly, he'd done. It was lucky that Worth was already so 'up there' (Worth didn't know masochistic terms and Conrad thought it sounded a bit like interest or concern or _commitment_ to google them) that it came off as something pretty bearable, but the man still had a fracture in his radius to deal with. That— and the fact that the constant drinking was starting to drag on Worth, maybe even brittling his bones a bit — was a clear sign that Conrad needed to do something.

Conrad needed to know the world. After six months of unlife, he'd come to accept there were things he couldn't do without if he ever wanted to stop faking it: terminology, things he had to watch out for. Questions for later, like would he ever really stop passing out at sunrise or did it get easier as you got older. And, as they say, when the student was ready, the teacher will appear.

Even if his supposed teachers were both looking at him like they would really, really like to get on with their night.

"Is there any reason you aren't celebrating with your friends?"

There was such an _and is there any reason you're still harassing us?_ prompt in Finas' deep, tolerant voice that Conrad nearly apologized on the spot. Even though, concerning Cas, he supposed the elder vampire's voice was never _without_ that slight tolerating tinge. The leggier vampire had committed to the encounter to the point of turning around and crossing his arms, looking down his crooked nose disapprovingly at the younger and infinitely less awesome vampire. Conrad fidgeted something awful, rubbing at his sleeve and looking down at the ground.

He took a deep, stupid, meaningless breath.

"I think … I need help."

Conrad glanced up. Finas was regarding him with an almost arrested look on his face, one brow raised. Cas looked unimpressed. Hell, _Conrad_ was unimpressed, so he braced himself and tried again.

"With this," he continued haltingly, white, bloodless hands gesturing to his skin and his fangs and the moon above him. He tried to grin but it came out as a nauseated, warped flash of teeth. "Whole … _thing_."

"This whole thing?" Cas repeated without a trace of mockery but Conrad heard it anyways, or maybe he just couldn't stand the grasping stupidity in his own words. If this didn't prove how much of a lost cause he was, nothing would.

"I didn't have a — what do you call it— a parent, or-or a sire, I guess. Or I had one and she was just about as much help as a thrown brick and actually a lot more dangerous than one, well what am I talking about, you know her, and since you do and you know how utterly evil she is I just thought that maybe —"

"Maybe we'd be willing to be your nanny? Watch you whet your teeth on prostitutes and trip over your own feet for a year or two?" Cas rolled his mismatched eyes, incredulity dripping down to sly superiority as he gave a model's half-turn, gesturing dismissively three feet to the left of the graphic designer. "Even with eternity, I don't have time for that."

Conrad went red, or tried to, which involved a lot of awful prickling on his skin. Finas' solemn eyes were still on him, though, so he tried again, louder.

"I don't expect you to do it for free. I don't know what I can pay you with, but I'm sure we could —"

"C'mon, Finas," Casimiro drawled in his completely un-placeable accent – really nothing more than liquid sex appeal with a hint of foreignness and a fresh sprig of fuck-off. "Witching hour's almost here, and I still want a moderately pretty and intoxicated dinner. I say we hit King's street first. It is Saturday, after all."

He started off but stopped almost immediately, pulled back by little more than a touch of the older vampire's hand on his sleeve. The one vampire who was still very-much studying Conrad as if he'd grown three heads or maybe, just maybe, he had an ounce of potential hiding under his clammy skin that wasn't ruined by his battery-acid nerves or his crushing sense of insufficiency.

"Finas?" Casimiro almost whined, mismatched eyes fixed on his stocky partner with something like anxiety.

"Asking to be trained is a large responsibility," Finas said at last. He let his hand fall from his friend's arm, expression deadly serious. Conrad felt the full weight of the man's attention on him like a particularly warm and stifling and electrified sweater. "How large I think you do not understand, especially the commitment by the trainer."

"No," Conrad put in tensely, hands out. When the much older vampire gave him a confused look — little more than a narrowing of his eyes — the graphic designer gestured at the air with difficulty, so torn between back-tracking and plowing forward that he spun in circles. "I mean … I don't want to be trained. I think. I don't want to sign a handler's release or anything. I just need to … know. Get tips. A crash-course in vampire. Just enough to…"

"Survive," Finas finished, red eyes fixed on the pale, hunched child stranded on the city sidewalk. Conrad looked up with almost unbearable meekness and nodded, mouthing absently around his fangs.

"It's mostly the bat thing. I won't really feel safe in public until I stop going rodent at random," he said quietly.

That was the last straw for Casimiro, who made a stifled groaning noise and slapped his forehead, as if realizing _exactly_ where Conrad was on a timeline of vampirism – and, more importantly, realizing it would be a crime to leave him to his own devices, lest he single-handedly out them all as a race and lead the government to employ a legion of hunters. Although this scenario ended up with the cringing baby dissected on a cold metal table, if asked, Cas would be forced to agree that the cons heavily outweighed the plusses.

"Well then, what are you idiots waiting for?" he demanded acridly, turning on his heel and beginning to stride down the sidewalk alone, gesturing at the air. "If we can spite the bitch by making something out of her illegitimate blood-spill, it's no use standing around and waiting for him to do it for us. We'd be here till Gehenna, anyways."

Conrad puffed up and gritted his teeth, then let it out. Because really, the designer was a little alright with being so compellingly pathetic if it meant he could _stop_ being compellingly pathetic sometime soon. Without too much mockery, but that was maybe a bit too much to hope for with Cas. The dead man didn't exactly scream 'nurturing and forgiving instructor,' and Conrad had the impression it would take him quite a while to figure Cas' quiet partner out.

In front of him, Finas gave his new half-charge one last up and down before turning and starting down the sidewalk after his partner. Conrad stood in the yellow halo of the streetlight, watching them walk away with his skin a-prickle in that blissful, terrifying oh-my-god-did-that-actually-work way, before he realized he was supposed to be _with_ them and sprinted off after. He fell into step beside Finas and a little behind Cas and, for once, there seemed to be a light at the end of his tunnel of eternal night, even if it was just the streetlamp at the corner.

Maybe, just maybe, it was going to be okay. Not all of it, not for forever, but enough, and for a while. It was nice to think about.


End file.
